Ray's Runners

or how I navigated Aztlan without Spanish

The team has finished raiding blight and are preparing to plan on how to travel to the Library, and how to raid it. The team heads to the safe house for a hot meal and a good nights rest.

Wednesday 03September 2076 – 09:00

Covon heads to the local stuffer shack for 20 doses of Psyche, Ange also picks up some Psyche. He then calls a smuggler, Rheingold, to see if he can smuggle them into San Antonio. He can get the whole team in, but it will take about 3 days. One day to stay at the end of Salish-Shide, one day to stay at the edge of Pueblo Council, then straight into San Antonio. Covon asks for some land craft to be awaiting them, which Rheingold is more than happy to arrange as well. The total cost will be 10,000¥ to smuggle the team into San Antonio. Covon attempts to negotiate, but fails miserably so the price is now 12,500¥ for smuggling the team + gear to San Antonio along with a vehicle awaiting upon arrival. Rheingold can pick up the team around 16:00 local time.

Covon attempts to get ahold of Sequoia to get some information on the library in San Antonio. She is able reach out to contacts she knows to find the team an introduction to a contact in the area.

Wednesday 03September 2076 – 11:00

Thundor calls his contact in the bar, but he doesn’t know of anything. He then calls his detective contact. The beat cop has heard of the location, but only in rumors.

Sequoia calls Covon back and gives Covon the contact details for Geto, whom will be awaiting for contact from the team when they arrive in San Antonio.

During the next two hours of down time the team contacts Cuillain to buy Thundor some SWAT armor and a ballistic mask customized like the rest of the teams gear.

Wednesday 03September 2076 – 16:00

The team heads out to meet Rheingold to get smuggled into Aztlan.

Thursday 04September 2076 – 23:00

The team made it to the first landing site for the evening near the border of Salish-shide and Pueblo Corporate Council.

Friday 05September 2076 – 23:00

The team lands at the second landing site near the border of Pueblo Corporate Council and Aztlan without incident.

Saturday 06September 2076 – 04:30

The team encounters an aztlan border patrol consisting of 5 troops in a combat helicopter. The team takes out the team, with no small amount of difficulties. Once they take out the patrol, Covon pulls the unconscious team into the craft and take off to hit San Antonio. Six hours later the team is back to fighting shape and land in town.

Saturday 06September 2076 – 11:00

Rheingold lands the craft in an abandoned warehouse district right outside of town, following the coordinates given to the team by Rheingold’s contact for meeting up with the ground vehicle. The team arrives to see a GMC Universe (Rigger 5.0 p. 59).

Covon calls Geto and asks for a safe house. The team is giving coordinates on the other side of town. The team heads to the safe house, a three bedroom apartment on the third floor of a tenement building. The team is given the safe house for a week, after that they will need to negotiate directly with the guy.

Ange decides to astrally assense the room to make sure it is clean, which it is. Then the team, from an audible perception test, realize that everyone is speaking Aztlaner Spanish. Luckily Ange can speak Spanish at a 2, so she can barely understand and communicate. The rest of the team does not. The team decides to learn Aztlanter Spanish together.

Sunday 07September 2076 – 09:00

Ange wakes up to cast some spells on herself. After preparing the team went out to the 2 block area where the Library is supposed to be located. The team notices the area is an old residential area that is now falling into disrepair. It is a lawless area where most people are barely surviving and tolerate existence by partaking of some vices, with people and gangs doing clearly illegal things in the street.

Ange decides to assense the area and notices that one building is heavily marked by a barrier surrounding it. She points out the building to the team who then decides to perceive in detail. This is a one story building with no obvious guards outside. Most people whom look like normal civilians of the area will noticeably avoid the building.

Ange asks around for some rumors of the area and find that a gang or group of people that inhabit the building are no joke. They have no qualms with beheading someone and leaving them in the streets. People don’t want to be caught even talking about the place, or looking in that direction.

Sunday 07September 2076 – 12:00

The team continued to wait and watch the location until after lunchtime. No one comes or goes in the location. Ange continues to ask around about the location, no one wants to discuss anything about the building or group in the building. Ange is able to tell the barrier was created by Geomancy, but nothing else.

The team decides to buy a breaching charge and wireless detonator from a local, as the area is full of lawlessness, a commercial explosive breaching charge.

Yet another seek and find mission, yay

The team reads the file and asks Kayless to negotiate with Jonathan Packard, the information broker, to collect Hasdatean’s contact info. The team pays 500¥ for the info.

The team does some legwork on Hasdatean, finding out that he is a white hat, a person that follows his or her own social agenda. Posting information to show negative light on horrible corporate actions, suspicious political assassinations, etc. From the research the team notices what at first appears to be a corrupted stream, but also shows repeating patterns. Kayless was able to run some algorithms similar to electronics warfare algorithms which show a commlink code, one different from which they purchased.

Kayless sends a message to the boards thanking Hasdatean for the information and that the team would like to intervene, if possible. Almost instantly a reponse comes to Kayless with the message of “meet here” and a location which is a matrix club.

The team link up their devices via the P-Tac and trodes to log into the matrix club where they were told to meet. The team heads into a back room as directed by arrows that appear and meet a tall, slender, well dressed elf. The team introduces themselves after Hasdatean introduces himself. After explaining how the team came about his contact info, Kayless realizes the specifics of etiquette in this type of encounter and is able to persuade Hasdatean that the team is here for actionable information, but may for another reason, and that they are able to contact him via both channels.

After explaining the GLF and how Petru’s cell has been escalating violence, Hasdatean tells the team of Petru’s last known location and that since their aims are aligned, he can send them something to help. The team doesn’t seem to be very technically savvy. Hasdatean then winks out of the matrix.

The team logs out to discuss the newest revelations when sensors on the HQ warn of an impending drone. The team prepares for an attack, when an incoming message asking for landing is received. Kayless directs the drone to land and receives a dongle. Plugging it into a burner comm they see a message from Hasdatean, “hope this is of aid, it will help pull any information from devices pertaining to GLF and Petru”.

The team decide to head to the last known location of Petru’s cell, an abandoned building in the pullyup barrens.

Upon arrival the team does some quick scout work – kayless uses flyspys to look for people and signals, while ange astrally perceives the area. They do not see any signals or people, except for a couple of homeless people around the area. Nothing magical is in the area.

Covon and Thundor decides to sneak around the area, trying to track whom was in the area, what they were doing, and where they were going. The two find that some people were leaving, a few going back, and some carrying heavier loads. Some of the people milled about in strange areas which led the team to find a flash-pak setup as a trap. Kayless is able to disarm the trap, but not able to save the flash-pak.

The team decides to slice the pie to help assist Thundor in searching for more traps while Kayless is searching for any wireless trigger signals. There are three more traps found: one flash-pak near the end of the hallway the stairs, one high explosive on the landing of the stairs, and one high explosive under the stairs meant to explode at the same time, dropping the stairs and anyone on the stairs.

Kayless is able to disarm the flash-pak at the hallway easily. He then decides to take a hit of Psyche to help him concentrate as he disarms the high explosives. Ange decides to take a hit of Psyche as well and increase her strength, agility, and reflexes. Ange summons a spirit to guard Kayless and the team against any glitches. Kayless spends the next 20 minutes disarming both high explosive traps.

The team searches the top floor finding one room still intact which contains the tag for a wireless receiver. Ange astrally projects into the room and sees a strange device on top of a table on one wall, with papers strewn about and a computer terminal. Kayless jumps into one of his kenmushi crawlers to go under the door and look at the device. It is an ANFO explosive with an optical trigger toward the door and a wireless trigger.

The team backs up while Kayless cuts a hole into the room away from the optical trigger. Upon entering the room he sets up an area jammer on his drone to look at the bomb. He realizes the device has the triggers in a metal shell, which takes some hardware work then disarm the bomb. After thinking, plotting, planning, the team changes directions to not disarm the bomb; Kayless uses a flyspy with a directional jammer on the bomb only and then uses the dongle on the terminal while his other flyspy scan the room taking video of the paperwork. Upon leaving the bomb detonates, incinerating the drone.

The team head back to the HQ to analyze the intelligence they have just recovered. Ange tries to decipher the paperwork, realizing it is arcane in nature. She cannot decipher most of the writing, it is written in an encrypted form that doesn’t make much sense. She can tell that the terrorist cell was trying to create or use a magical ritual. The texts also contain references to Alchera, which she describes to the team.

Covon plugs in the dongle and receives a comm code that is a location in the matrix. The team enters the matrix to find an area decorated like a kindergarten play field. Blocks, toys, and a chalk board. An anime styles rabbit icon seeming to be made of data arrives and starts showing data on the chalkboard. The team is given a little history of Petru, showing himself as an icon of justice and how his cell has escalated their violence. Ange realizes that Petru is showing himself as the manifestation of Tyr, the Viking god of justice. The icon also shows the team a globe showing dots linked by dotted lines, indicating locations where the cell has been. It ends with a location after where this intelligence was found, a place at the Seattle pier. Kayless finds a satellite image exactly 4 days prior, the time frame where Covon and Thundor estimate when the cell left. It shows people with moving trucks, in an area about the size of a block.

Monday 07September 2076 – Early Evening

Covon does some matrix searches on the GLF, finding that they are an eco-terrorism organization. The team then decides to head to the site for some surveillance. Upon arrival the team go to a soycafe for a meal as the flyspys survey the area. The block is made up of buildings in a 2×3 formation. The far one at the back, near the shore, has two guards outside with people coming and going, not carrying anything. This is very suspect and causes Kayless to coldsim a flyspy into the building. It is a series of rooms, with two guards outside, four guards inside, and two workers at terminals. The couriers come into pass and collect information, then leave. Kayless parks his flyspy and uses EW to siphon up the signals. He passes the encrypted data to the team, Covon then puts it on a commlink and plugs in the dongle.

The team get a weird signal of a rabbit walking around the comm to eat a carrot at which time Kayless receives a note showing locations. His knowledge of Seattle aids Kayless in identifying the sites as either former terrorist locations or drug safe houses, except for one. This last site is in San Antonio, just across the border in Aztlan.

The team begin discussions on planning to raid the drug safe houses and help make the sprawl a better place…

Abduction, theft, and smuggling, oh my

Covon and Ange begin questioning Professor Olympia while wearing ballistic masks to hide their identities. Ange casts influence on Olympia with the suggestion that Olympia should be cooperative with her kidnappers questions, she was taken due to the team needing information. Covon sits back in his swat armor and ballistic mask as Ange begins the interrogation.

The teams asks her if she has seen the ring, where it is currently located, and it’s physical description. She has analyzed it, cleaned it, and authenticated it; she was taken to a shed/warehouse/tool storage location at a large house near the bay; The ring is in the shape of a big snake eating it’s own tail, the ring is made of stone, and extremely large. It could fit around Covon’s waist, it is also thick. Covon asks if her sight was hindered in someway during traveling to the ring; she was picked up in a vehicle and the driver blackened all the windows so she couldn’t see where to go. Covon also asks if she was hired by Randolph, which she was. He then decides to ask if it poses any danger, which it does not. He was wondering about the ring’s properties; the ring does appear on the astral plane, but it is fuzzy and doesn’t show detail. The ring didn’t respond to any known tests to understand it’s powers, but it also did not react to any sort of magic either – fire or acid couldn’t touch it, even magic. Olympia kept her notes of the ring for another dissertation, which Covon accessed on her commlink after removing his ballistic mask.

Covon asks Chang to access the commlink and see if she has looked for any of the other artifacts. She has looked at many artifacts, but has not seen the four coins of luck or the seal of green gloves. She has seen many different version of the key of power over the years, but they all turned out to paper lotus, not the real artifact. No one knows what the key of power looks like, but her colleague sounds as if she has seen the actual artifact. Her colleague known as Amanda Stroh.

After this questioning, Covon releases Olympia’s manacles and gave her a venti double chocolate frappachino, then releases her at the soybucks.

The team heads off to the rented safehouse.

Thursday early afternoon 03September2076

Covon spends some tally points to get karma (8 tally for 5 karma). He then spends the following day with Chang learning the basics of computer skill.

Friday early afternoon 04September2076

The afternoon after learning computer Covon does a computer search to see if he can find plans for the house of Rudolph T. Donovan, III. With 5 hits Covon is able to find some aerial plans of the compound along with electrical diagrams showing alarm systems, back up generators, and recent satellite images.

Covon then decides to continue the search from some lucky find random financial statements of Rudolph. The satellite images show three Evo Aquavita boats at the pier, one is owned and two are rented. The financial statements has some inconsistencies which do not match the Aquavita, a little deeper look shows that Rudolph has also recently purchased the 85,000,000¥ Lurssen Mobius.

Kayless is able to show that the Mobius could be moored out near the house pier in Bainbridge Island, but it couldn’t go all the way around Bainbridge due to the size and narrowness of the canals. Rudolph will probably be ferrying people to the Mobius on the Aquavitas.

Covon calls OJ to see if he has connections, Johnny Bluestone perhaps?!?; OJ doesn’t have an invite to the soiree as he thinks Rudolph is a poser. He gives Covon the number of Johnny Bluestone. Covon calls Johnny Bluestone to see if he can get an invite – five personalized invites for the team. He knows a guy, a forger, that can make invites at 1,000¥ per invite. He will call Covon in the morning after Covon pays him 7,000¥

Covon does a quick matrix search to show the layout of the Mobius ship, which is an easy find. After the search Ange astrally projects to the boat and finds it is in the normal configuration with only a few options added such as a diving deck and extra hot tub, but it is not setup for the artifact or the party at this time. She remembers the ring was in a “warehouse or toolshed” when Olympia was authenticating it. Ange searches an outlying building and notices something on the astral plane that is magical and couldn’t see any security within the building, just camera on the outer buildings as would be expected on a high value property.

The team makes the decision to infiltrate the property tomorrow evening, Saturday.

Friday late afternoon 04September2076

Covon heads to the local marina and purchases himself a Proteus Lamprey and some diving gear.

Saturday 05September2076

Covon studies piloting watercraft for the full day of Friday.

Sunday 06September 2076

The team decides to do a water infiltration with Covon’s new toy, the Proteus Lamprey, early morning on Sunday at 02:00. After stuffing all their needed gear into dry bags, they don their diving gear.

Covon navigates the Lamprey into the bay and leave the Laprey in the ocean offshore to hover in place about 10m from shore and 10m down (the coast line is very deep, approx. 30m in total depth).

Both Covon and Ange are able to use their diving skill (in Ange’s case trying to imitate Covon’s maneuvers) to get to shore. On shore Ange has her spirit of Water to use concealment power on both of them. After being concealed they both change out of diving gear and into their assault gear.

Covon and Ange sneak to the front of the toolshed, Ange attempts to meld the lock on the door with toxic wave, but was unable. Covon cuts the lock with a miniwelder; the team sneaks into the room finding a table in the middle covered in a blanket. Removing the blanket they find the ring locked down to the table with mechanical ties. After cutting the tie downs a couple of orks appear.

Ange is able to tell that they are speaking in Or’zet and say they noticed the sheet moved so something should be in the toolshed. The team stays silent and unmoving watching as two more orks and then followed by another two orks. One of them stares at Covon, whom becomes unnerved and moves. The one ork continues to stare at Covon and then tries to cast a bold of acid on Covon!

Covon and Ange are able to kill all of the orks, although not without some difficulties. The magical ork hit both of the team members with a very powerful ball lightning spell which injured each, while also causing the team to focus on him until slain. After combat Ange assesses the magical ork and finds 4 preparations (which later expired) and a foci. Taking the predator V pistols, ammo, and commlinks, the team uses an earth spirit to help take the ring of oroboros to the diving gear and onto the Proteus Lamprey. A short dive home, Kayless is awaiting the team’s arrival with the Roadmaster.

Covon calls Chang to offer to let him examine the Ring for a full day to collect the 3,000¥. He gives the team a location of a research lab in Seattle that has a loading dock to drop it off tonight. The team drops off the ring at Chang’s lab then Covon calls Simon and gives him a full dossier on the ring.

Monday 07September 2076

The team pick up the ring from the research lab and drop it off at locations specified by Laurent. He thanks the team for such a good mission, the streets are silent on the job itself with only rumors floating around that the team is still deeply involved in the great artifact rush. At the end of the day the team has netted a cool 16,000¥ each and a small file with information gathered by the information broker on the next item – the Key of Power.

how I stopped worrying and learn to love the face who can negotiate

Covon takes the captured Rusty Nail Ork out to the roadmaster and stays guard to watch him. Kayless scans the crowd looking for anything odd, realizing that these are working stiffs, the rugged type that drink their paycheck away each week; he is the one sticking out as he is overdressed.

Covon and FNG are able to get Bertrand the Rusty Nails Ork to agree to be a contact for a favor they may need. Covon gives him a burner commlink, one of the metalink commlinks the team keeps in the roadmaster and the team headquarters, to use for this contact.

Kayless decides to stop in a drive through to give the guy a bottle of cheap liquor while Covon provides 1,000¥ to the Ork. The mages in the group (Ruthless, Ange, and FNG) all began assensing the Ork.

The team grabs a good meal and sleeps until 11:00 (they arrived at 03:00)

Sunday morning 30August2076

The team decides to perform some legwork on the location of soiree. Kayless realizes that the location of the house is in an extremely wealthy location, a gated community where the nouveau riche live, a community that value security + privacy. The area has contracts with both Lone Star and KE for response teams; if an event would occur both Lone Star and KE would arrive on the scene. Luckily for the team each corp would use their own response, not coordinating with the others, unfortunately they each use HTR teams.

FNG and Ange know that both KE and Lone Star will respond with HTR teams with a response time in minutes.

The team decides to look for a helicopter for ingress/egress. Kayless is able to locate many chop shops in the area, one of which specializes in aircraft. The team rolls into the chop shop, with Kayless leading the negotiation. He flounders by trying to impose his force of will on the fixer whom owns the chop shop, to sell him a specific helicopter. The fixer does have one in the shop, but it was checked in under the name “Smith” not “Magnus Magnusson”.

Ange steps in to try to see if the fixer is able to procure a vehicle for the team. The price of the vehicle will make it six weeks; negotiation between Ange (defaulting) and the fixer has the new deal to be two weeks when the shop can try to get a vehicle in the 6 week delivery time.

The team heads outside for Ange to use a spirit of earth to conceal the team. Covon and FNG are going to sneak around the facility to find the helicopter. They find the helicopter in an outside attached lot under an awning to protect the craft and other crafts. Covon and FNG search for security around the area. Cameras have the whole area, with a fence that is locked using chain and a lock. The aircraft has the blades folded up, under the awning, and sitting on a wheeled platform to be moved by tugs.

The team decides to steal the craft now, at 13:00 on Sunday when the chop is fully staffed. Ange is going to summon a spirit of air with one service. She asks the spirit to conceal Kayless while Ruthless levitates Kayless over the fence into the storage area.

Kayless releases his flyspys, each with the area jammer and directional jammer into the storage area. Kayless enters the craft and connects as a rigger to find that the craft is in perfect working order, except it is missing a vehicle ID. This is a stolen craft…

The team pulls off the awning and rolls the craft out from under the roofed area to the landing area in a stealthy manner. After locking the blades in place, kayless starts up the rotors in a stealthy manner, opening the doors to let FNG and Covon into the craft, while directing the Fly Spys to return to the Roadmaster 10 minutes after taking off. Ruthless and Ange ride in the Roadmaster back to the hippy camp, chasing after the stolen helicopter.

Upon arrival at the hippy camp Kayless paints the vehicle and works up a list of mods to do to the vehicle.

Two days for delivery on the weapon mount; one day delivery on the other items with a total of 21,500¥. Kayless pays 23,000¥ to Rorshach.

Covon decides to call Sweetwater to find a vehicle facility, one that can be had for cheap (trying recoup their losses), that still has all the equipment available. Sweetwater was able to find a facility for 30,000¥; covon pays 40,000¥ to her for the vehicle facility. He labels it “Covon’s Cave” and sends the GPS coordinates to Kayless to come see his “ninja-man cave” or “elf-cave” that he just purchased.

The rest of the team sleeps and rests for the next two days. Covon learns free fall. FNG increases his free fall to 2. The micro rack took 5 hours to install on day 1; the medium rack took 7 hours. Day 2 kayless works on installing the weapon mount, giving up after 7 hours of trying. He did another 6 hours and gives up again. At the end, Kayless payed 3,600¥ for a professional to come install the weapon mount. Ruthless summoned and bound a spirit of man and spirit of fire. Ange just rests for the three days.

Thursday morning 03September2076

The team decides to check on the container vessel, during the matrix search Kayless was lucky enough to come across some news articles about container ships being hit by pirates in the area early this week. Pirates are using this as a living, the vessels will cut their losses of a few containers, unwilling to risk the ship and just pull on insurance for replacement value, while the pirates use this as a form of living (somali pirates?!?). This vessel is specifically listed as being hit by pirates.

Ruthless and Ange astrally project onto the ship and found that two of the five containers are no longer containing magical items. Two are stacked full of reagents with one having a small amount of foci.

Covon looks on the matrix to verify the soiree is still on. Even with all the pirates operating, the soirée is unaffected. He then decides to call Victor Runningmountain to see if he has any information on these containers being smuggled somewhere. Covon pays him 500¥ for the knowledge that a few groups are working in the area; one team is newer and headed up by a former Naval Commander (former Lt. Cmdr. Titus West) because this is a highly coordinated and targeted attack.

Covon called Jane Foster to get info on the appraiser, Olympia. He finds she is well respected in her field and sometimes teaches at a local MIT&T branch. Ange checks to find that she is teaching a course for Autumn semester – archeological techniques in unearthing artifacts.

Ange and Ruthless head to the local MIT&T branch. After class Ange begins small talk with Olympia and attempts to plant a crawler into her briefcase. Olympia notices the crawler, becomes suspicious and calls campus security. Both Ange and Ruthless head out into the quad.

Covon and FNG find the facility parking lot to the north-west and decide to ambush the professor. Kayless drives up the block near the lot with magecuffs at the ready. As soon as she appears Covon and FNG shock Olympia to unconsciousness, put her in the Roadmaster, then pick up Ange and Ruthless. Covon heals Olympia to consciousness.

The Great Artifact Rush, artifact 1

The team was previously offered a job by Laurent from the Atlantean Foundation, they are to find and recover four artifacts. The pay is a meager 9,000 per person per artifact; Kayless is able to smoothly negotiate 12,000 per person per artifact and if all four are delivered successfully then each person on the team will be given a chip by Laurent.

The team decided to see what the other power player in The Great Artifact Rush, Draco Foundation, would be wiling to pay. Covon negotiates with Moreau a price of 10,000 per person per artifact to be delivered, with a condition that Moreau is NOT buying the coins of lucky. He is merely paying courier service of finding, collecting, and returning them.

The team hears rumors that Simon Andrews is interested in the artifacts and upon contacting him they are informed that he is willing to pay 1,000 per person for all information surrounding the artifact – who had it, where was it, how the players are able to acquire it, and anything useful they know about it.

Playing the other side yet again, the players hear that Lin Yao Chang is interested as well. He is willing to pay 3,000 per player if he can examine each artifact for one day.

With that the team is given the contact details of an information broker whom may be able to assist – Jonathan Packard.

Now the legwork begins -

First up is the Ring of Oroboros, which the team is given a heavily redacted file a decker sold to the information broker, this part is free. The first hit is always free…

The team begins draining the information broker of anything he knows about the ring: Where was it last known location? (The Grand Bazaar in Turkey where it was sold in a black market auction); Who sold the ring? (a gang known as “the 40 thieves” whom are known for their secrecy in both seller and buyer); Where is it going? (a Seattle warehouse for cleaning, authentication, and inspection); Where will it go from the warehouse? (it will be shipped via guarded convoy to another location, which has eluded the information broker); Who is appraising the ring? (A woman named Olympia Pichette); and Who bought the ring? (an unknown technocrat).

Kayless has heard some rumors about the warehouses in this area. Right next to the shipping wharf is a huge complex of warehouses, temporary storage warehouses. Companies can rent the warehouses for days, weeks, or months as needed for temporary holding space as goods are shipped into and out of Seattle.

Ange hit the streets to find out more information about the artifact expert Olympia Pichette, Kayless helps with some of his street contacts in digging up rumors. The team is able to find Olympia’s P2.1 that shows her CV (MIT&T alum with a bachelors degree in magical history and PhD in artifact magic). They also hear she runs a consultancy business where they clean, repair, identify, and authenticate magical items and artifacts.

Covon tries Jane Foster to help do some research, but is unable to reach her.

Ange and Kayless again hit the streets together to see if there are any rumors about the technocrat whom bought the ring. They hear it was a nouveau riche technocrat who made his money with some lucky investments by the name of Rudolph T. Donovan, III.

Kayless sits down to study the logistics of smuggling such an item from The Grand Bazaar into Seattle by way of sea port. He realizes that it would be done by placing it in a shipping container, one of thousands on the same ship (security by obscurity). At this point Kayless realizes he needs some matrix support to continue finding useful information. He calls his children whom successfully negotiate 50 per question and a bag of candy.
1) They are able to find satellite images which show a container ship that left Turkey at the same time and has a very circuitous route which will land in Seattle in 1-2 weeks, depending upon weather conditions, before continuing on to South America.
2) What artifacts does Rudolph T. Donovan, III have besides the ring? None
3) What business dealings does he have in The Grand Bazaar? None, all transactions are done through secure middlemen, just like shadowrunning
4) Does he own a shipping company? No
5) Is anything being transported in his name? no
6) Other business associates he has? Far too many to list, he is a former low level executive of an AA corp
7) Any notes on the shipping container? It is a red one, no specific details given as it is on the ships manifest
8) What ship is it being transported on? The HWCS Yucatan

Ang decided to see what rumors show about the security of Heavy Weight Container Ships. She finds that it has a few riggers that take shifts navigating the ship and a skeleton crew to keep the automated systems running. The ship loads and unloads itself, with little input from a rigger. The ships usually have heavy ECM to protect the rigger and robotic systems along with fire suppression systems that can be used offensively to deter pirates attempting to board the ship.

While Kayless finishes paying his child for information he is offhandedly informed that there is a soiree being held by Rudolph, which is how they were able to locate information on him. The invite is shared with the team, specifying the party will be at his newly purchased house, complete with boat dock and accompanying yacht, the week following the arrival of the artifact.

Ang decides to astrally project herself and travel to the ship to assense it. The ship is able to be located via satellite imagery; ang doesn’t find anything magical outside of the ship. She decided to use 5 of her spirits to help her search each of the 2,000 containers and the hull of the ship. The find that 5 containers contain magic of some type; three are completely full while two have smaller amounts. Neither Ang nor the spirits have seen the ring to know what it truly looks like and cannot locate it quite that easily. They are able to locate which containers out of the 2,000 so the team is able to watch for it as it is unloaded.

At this point the team realizes they need a safe house to work out of as they do traditional footwork, putting the synth-leather to the pavement so to speak. Kayless and {Brian} work together on finding a safe house that meets the teams needs – a 2 bedroom furnished apartment on the 10th floor of a 12 floor building that rents to executives on short term leases for business meetings. The flat has a clear view of the port as they needed. All of this for the low price of 300 a day; the team rents the flat until the Saturday after the party, a total of 14 days for 4200 out of the team fund.

The team heads out to survey the warehouse on foot. A long building with no windows, with doors on each of the short sides and an angled cheap metal roof make this building look like it was put up quickly and cheaply. Basic security with maglocks on doors that stay open most of the time, reminding the team of a hanger, except a small side door near one end that goes into an office room.

It is owned by a company known as Empire Rentals, with a huge AR sign emblazoned on the sides showing an attractive elf woman and rugged ork male speaking about the security, cleanliness, and ease of renting a warehouse from Empire Rentals. Other than the ad, no one notices any untoward activity; all the drones and workers mill about as to be expected in a warehouse/shipping setting. There are a few people that stand out as unsavory types, mafia men who take a cut of some dealings. Nothing unusual for an area populated by longshoreman and teamsters.

Kayless searches some of the dark matrix and finds that underground rigger games are held regularly in this area, each Saturday night late to early Sunday morning games are held in a different warehouse as area is available.

After a full day of legwork the team decides to call this Friday evening to an end, grabbing some chow and a nights sleep.

Ang decides to do some assensing in the area, {Brian} also joins in. The building has some geomancy wards on it, which Ang quickly realizes is to help keep the structure intact not a defensive ward. As they are assensing Kayless releases his flyspys to swarm around the area and look for any ECM, but nothing is found.

Covon and {Brian} head up to the roof of the safe house to assess the warehouse line of sight and sighting trajectory where they notice that they cannot get a clear sight picture to any door, only the long side and the roof.

The team heads back to the warehouse Saturday night late to attend the rigger games. Kayless dresses to impress rather than participate in the game and places a be (200 on 1:10 odds). He notices some commotion in the corner after placing his bet and releases his flyspys to record the happenings.

Covon and Ang decide they need to see how this FNG can handle himself. They take {Brian} over to where a group of 8 gangers are hanging out. A quick scan reveals these are members of the Rusty Nails, a gang that the team has encountered previously, whom gave up quickly without a shot fired. Not this time – Covon and {Brian} both continue to antagonize until the Nail draw their stun batons.

A few second later and most of the Nails are dead, with a couple knocked unconscious. Covon handles one as he usually does – restrains and disarms him, then heals him to garner information. Unfortunately the team was a little rough and it takes a few hours before the Ork comes to his senses.

Plan and (hopefully) execute

Covon and Ange are joined once again by Ruthless, Lycus the adept, and Jian-Min the technomancer on Thursday, 23rd July 2076. The team does some more legwork on Dr. Amanda Stroh and the lab where she works. They find nothing new on the target besides she has a corp sin and no criminal sin, but did find the lab performs unspecified research. The team also tries to investigate why Amanda keeps working for the corps when she is extracted back and forth – none of their contacts come up with anything specific, only that she was born to corp parents and has always been in the corp-drone life. The team then decides to do a stakeout of the lab.

Covon decides to contact a smuggler, Viktor Running Mountain of the Cascade Ork tribe, for some help in smuggling Dr. Stroh out of seattle. Viktor is able to pass along contact info of a fixer in Salish-Shide – Damon Price. Background on Damon shows he is a generalist when it comes to being a fixer, always trying to get as much money as possible with as little danger; he is not the most courageous man. Damon does try to stick with moving people via coyotes as it gives him maximum profit with little personal risk and exposure.

Ange calls Damon for some info. He is able to find a position, but will take two days (Saturday, 25th July) and cost 3,000. After some failed negotiations Damon is willing to find a position matching what the team needs for 4,000.

On Friday Damon calls Ange back with info about a corp within the Salish-Shide that has an opening for a parazoology researcher, someone with arcane knowledge and research ability. Phoenix Biotech is looking for a person that has a valid, unrestricted sin, and a CV capable of passing the HR department review (they must be able to actually perform the job). The company is based in Denver, with a satellite office in Seattle, but the position is in the field in Salish-Shide.

Jian does research on Phoenix Biotech finding that they do research to find ways to create new implants for the biotech and cybertech markets, finding inspiration in parazoology and parabotany.

The following day (Saturday) the team decides to do some physical surveillance of the lab.
The lab is two stories, with the main floor lobby being glass front and along the sides of the building partially. Across the other two sides of the building are other two story corp locations, one of which has a soy café, and a park behind the lab consisting mostly of some trees, a fountain, and benches where the employees have lunch frequently. The lab has an airbridge to cross the street out from for the employees to reach the worksite from a residence hall. The lobby of the lab is guarded by three guards, one behind a desk checking ID and bags, with two more posted in conspicuous locations. None of the guards carry heavy weapons, these are mostly to show a physical presence. The building has cameras in the lobby and also along the roof top. Lycus uses some crazy parkour to scale building and investigate the roof. The roof has one door to the building, secured with a maglock, and no visible air vents for a possible entry point.

Jian does matrix surveillance and find the host is a rating 8 host with patrol IC running constantly and two spiders. It doesn’t seem to have any obvious technomancer backdoors.

Ange and Ruthless begin assensing the site finding that there are two watcher spirits (both summoned from separate mages) and a force 6 air spirit guarding the site.

Ange, Covon, and Lycus all call their fixers to see about getting a fake sin at rating 6 for the doctor. Lycus can get one for 20,000 and it will take a week; Ange is able to also get one in 1 week for 20,000. Covon gets extremely lucky when he calls Jazz from the Ork Underground. Jazz just happens to have one sitting around that matches the doctors CV very closely. It will take only three days (to be delivered on Tuesday 28th July) and will cost only 9,000 to setup.

The team stay at the site until evening watching as the late, dedicated, researchers leave around 20:00. Guards also change out a little after this – a van pulls up to the entrance, two guards exit taking up recon positions as three guards walk from the van to the lobby and replace the three on duty. Then the van pulls away with the two recon guards and three replaced guards.

The team follows the van to a site a few blocks away, another residence style hall that seems to contain only security personnel and a garage full of security vans. The team notices a bowl noodle vendor along the street. They stop to grab some (well, for covon a lot) of food and see if the guy has some info. Nothing really actionable, unfortunately, so the team heads home for some needed rest.

The team shows up the following morning (Saturday, 25th July 2076) to find the lab was attacked just minutes prior! A barricade separates the trid news media from EMTs and other emergency personnel who are helping injured researchers. Firefighters are working to stop some small blazes that are under control. The team asks around and searches the matrix finding clear video showing a vehicle pull up to the front, a team of people hop out and open fire on the lab. They rush in, pulling out someone and taking off with surgical precision.

Covon is able to tell they have some military training or at least some background while Ruthless notices that the obvious leader of the team is none other than Commander Titus even though he is not in uniform! Some quick small unit tactics combined with local area knowledge from Covon and Lycus point that the team would want to lay low for a two or three days in a very defensible yet remote site. This will let any heat die down before they deliver the doctor to wherever they are destined. The team find the perfect location, an abandoned airport just outside seattle proper.

The team heads to the team HQ, grabbing gear suitable for a heavy conflict and drive to about 1km of the airport. Jian sends his flys-spy drone in to look around, giving the team a rough map of the area when it is suddenly destroyed. The team is able to deduce that the shot was suppressed and came from the control tower. Knowing they are dealing with a sniper the team is frozen, just perceiving the site from afar. They notice that a few hanger type buildings have some Orks from an obvious gang (the hooks, a relatively unknown and new ork gang known for their penchant for violence and excessive greed) patrolling and swapping positions from three that guard the fuel depot.

After a very furious and dangerous combat the team is able to kill the sniper in the control tower and one razor guy, with the rest of the runner team escaping on a VTOL craft. Not before (former) Commander Titus telling the team that this will not be the last they see of him.

The team find Dr. Stroh bound in the corner of the maintenance shed. Now that she is “safe” team only needs to get her to her new life. Easy as a milk run.

The end of something and the beginning of another

After subduing the spec-ops team sent to the team’s rented safe house in Australia, a decision is made to head back to Seattle and quickly. The team finds a coyote (Magnus) whom is able to take them the following morning, which turns into a rather uneventful ride. Upon arrival in Seattle the members split off, heading into their own bolt-holes to rest and re-equip. Covon takes the sextant and meets up with a new runner for support – Ange (pronounced ahnj) an elven witch that he has heard of, but never ran with before.

Covon sets up a meet with the Johnson in a local city park, a very antiquated spy-trid-esque hand off, on Tuesday, June 9th, 2076. Covon heads out to buy a new jeep before he and Ange scout the local park to setup defensible positions. Ange will take a sniper position on top of a nearby building while Covon does the exchange. After a good meal and a full nights rest both runners head to the local park at 14:00, a full two hours early.

Mr. Johnson arrives, sitting next to Covon, and nonchalantly picks up the duffel bag holding the sextant. A couple pleasantries later, Covon and Mr. Johnson part ways. This was the easiest meet the team has ever had, a pure milk run!

As the two runners leave they notice a go-gang driving around making a ton of noise. Ugh, Seattle life is not what it used to be. Sounds of gunfire reverberate when the team receives a call from an unidentified number. The caller at the end introduces himself as Moreau, the Mr. Johnson is working for Moreau to handle this run. Moreau is in need of the runners help directly – Mr. Johnson is being attacked at the park, risking the loss of the sextant. The team needs to only cause enough of a disturbance that will delay the gang so the Mr. Johnson can escape. Moreau will pay the runners a cool 7,000¥ for a (hopefully) short and easy afternoon.

The team is able to delay the Ork gang through judicial use of smoke grenades and spirit concealment ability for Mr. Johnson to escape. Moreau calls the team to send the payment and thank the runners, informing them to call him when they are ready for a new job.
The team takes five weeks of downtime to heal, rest, and improve themselves. During this time the team can’t help noticing the newest tag line in the news trids – The Great Artifact Rush. It seems that some new artifacts have been appearing all around the world and corps have been in a rush to snatch them for research and to further their own (P&L driven) agenda. These endeavors has become so heated and to become a blitz, spilling over out of the shadows and into the mainstream consciousness. Any and every situation is being attributed to The Great Artifact Rush; every murder is seen as a possible connection to an illicit meeting to exchange info on an artifact; every fire an arson used to cover a theft attempt; every explosion is envisioned to be criminal elements blowing their way into a building to steal information on artifacts. Not all of this is true, of course.

Good thing everyone can swim

Friday evening is spent relatively uneventfully; Covon is preparing gear and snacking on milcorp spec protein-energy-microbe-enhanced bars; Ruthless is working at the little portable stove to get some cookies made; Kayless, as usual, tinkers away on his drones. All while Da’ Stroker is doing some legwork on the infil and exfil plan setup. The plans unnerve him so much that he decides to bow out, rather than infiltrate a warship using only his deck and his grenade launcher (not the best for such close, tight quarters). Luckily he knows a few chummers hard on their luck and needing a score, both relatively new to the scene – Lycus an infiltrator with that edge which only comes from being magically adept and Elvis a decker of some skill both in the matrix and in meatspace. They are accompanied by the rarely present Horra, who decides to join in the reindeer games.

Saturday morning everyone meets at the safehouse, to reevaluate the plan with the new team capabilities, handle a little more legwork, and ensure there is the level of professional mistrust among new associates. Once business is concluded, they set out for diving and climbing instruction at the beach.

The instruction takes place at a beachside bungalow styled shack, a complete dive shop with recreation vehicles, sporting equipment, and a portable climbing simulation wall. This is clearly a place more suited for vacation activities than high quality instruction, but the proprietor, a jovial dwarf of no small demeanor, makes it known that the team is getting first rate lessons. Climbing in the morning, lunch break, then diving in the evening (to better enjoy the bio-luminescent critters!) the team is in for a full day. As they are climbing out of the water during diving instruction the team is greeted by a large group of sailors, headed up by a stern looking man in charge.

Some tense conversation, and failed negotiation, the team is taken into custody. Boarding the CSS kittyhawk as and thrown in the brig, the team has to plot how to get out, find their gear, acquire the target, and find a new egress plan.

The team is interrogated by the XO, Commander Titus West. Cmdr. West appreciates Covon’s direct and honest approach, realizing that the team is really a covert unit appearing as if they are shadowrunners trying to infiltrate the carrier group. How else would the team have such confidential information? The commander arranges for the team to collect their standard issue gear from the quartermaster.

After getting dressed and geared the team makes a new plan to acquire the sextant. Horra will attempt to seduce the Captain to get into his quarters, from there she will subdue him and steal the sextant. The rest of the team will prepare the ex-filtration – blowing a hole in the side of the ship’s hull, creating a separate diversion, and escaping to swim to shore.
Horra is able to seduce her way into the captains quarters, past the stationed marine outside. She informs the captain of the mutiny in his midst headed up by the XO. The captain orders the XO to be detained, starting a huge commotion aboard the ship, and then successfully subdued the captain with a slap patch. The team meets at the aft launch ramp, finding a couple of Zodiac Scorpio. Launching the craft the team uses a spirit from Ruthless for concealment and the team’s stealth abilities to navigate to shore. Hopping in the van at the training location, the team head back to the safehouse.

Upon arrival at the safehouse not all is as it seems. There is no foot traffic, no random people wandering about their day; searching the matrix the team finds a group setup in ambush. Covon directs some small unit tactics and the team assaults the ambush! After a very lengthy fight, the CAS special force team is subdued, restrained, and healed (as much as can be, those that were not killed). Now the team only need to return the sextant, collect their payday, and head home for some much needed R&R.

Everything in Australia is poisonous

Covon, Kayless, and Ruthless all received a group call in the late afternoon from a strange number. A clearly inexperienced “Mr. Johnson” got their contact info from a friend of a friend who knows a guys… He contacts the team as he is in need of someone experienced in property retrieval, something that needs to be returned to him and his client. Kayless agrees to a meet where they can negotiate terms and learn more of this job, agreeing to meet at a local dive bar Tuesday afternoon at 22:00.
Once the team hangs up the call they realize that they only know to meet a “Mr. Johnson” at a local dive bar at 22:00 tomorrow, but nothing more about who this is – no other description, no photo, no identification to find the person in the bar. Kayless asks around about the dive bar, to see what types of rumors exist, only to find that it is a rather inconspicuous location, a bar where locals go to drink away their paychecks and sorrows.
Arriving at the dive bar an hour early the team realizes this is not the typical meet locale, rather this dive bar has an open mic spoken word night, filled to the brim with beatnik artistic types. Covon scans the crowd and finds the Johnson, sitting in a corner booth waving profusely at the team. No one in the bar even acknowledges the runners, everyone is transfixed on the person on stage at the mic. The Johnson activates a small white noise generator while Kayless commands a flyspy drone to circle above the group with its directional jammer active to give the team more privacy.
Mr. Johnson tells the team that he is willing to pay 50k per person on the team and 10k upfront (for a total of 60k) if the team is able to retrieve an object for him. He needs this object returned in the next few weeks. Kayless attempts to fast talk the Johnson, hoping to compliment him enough that the job will pay more. Some crude negotiation later and the Johnson is willing to pay 75k per team member with a 15k being an advance. The team accepts and gets down to the specifics of the run.
The team needs to retrieve an item known as the Sextant of the Worlds, which has shown up in a recent CAS navy photo. This artifact is in possession of Captain Samuel J. Barret, CASN, and Captain of the newly commissioned CSS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier. The item was given to Capt. Barret by an unknown person whom asked for him to act as a courier, delivering the item during the stop-over in Thailand to a buyer.
The carrier is on deployment as part of the Carrier Strike Group 1 (CSG1) and is sailing along with Carrier Strike Group 2. The ship has just left port in Lima, Peru and will stay over this next weekend in Melbourne, Australia before continuing through the Asia Pacific islands to port again in Thailand. The team must retrieve this item from the captain’s display case in his quarters aboard the CSS Kitty Hawk and return it to Mr. Johnson before the ship arrives in Thailand, where the item will be transferred.
Mr. Johnson passes the team a portfolio of information – schematics and deck plans of the ship; bills of lading; crew manifest; bios of the CO, XO, CMC, and Master at arms; ships schedule. Mr. Johnson is also able to arrange for transportation and rental vehicles for the players if the need arises.
Assaulting a carrier is no joke and not to be taken lightly, whether at sea, via air, or even in port, the team decides to arrange some prep as they travel to Australia. Upon arrival the team needs a scuba instructor, a climbing instructor, two grapple guns with stealth wire and catalyst rods, two Lampreys, four sets of diving gear (one troll sized), and four wet bags. Kayless paid the 7,000 deposit for safe return of both Lampreys and 9,500 for gear/instructors. The team then uses another 5,000 per person from the advance to pay for a coyote to get to Australia with a subsection of gear.
Before leaving town the team decides they need some matrix support on-site; Kayless calls Sweetwater to convince her to join the team. She is bothered by the idea of sneaking onto a military vessel at sea, hacking state of the art, cutting edge matrix equipment onboard the ship, then sneaking away. Last time she got caught and was in a black site for months on end. She is willing to provide matrix support and overwatch, but Kayless is unable to convince her to go with them in person. Covon calls Rorschach whom is able to track down a kiwi combat decker who goes by the name of Da’ Stroker. This new ally is not only up for the mission, he is craving the thrill of such a dangerous op. Da’ Stroker passes the team a VR marker for a bar in Sidney where he will await the team (bar tabs on them!) and also sets up local transportation for the team to go to a safe house.
The team lands in Sydney uneventfully Thursday morning early, hops in the transportation van, and heads to a local safe house. This is a tenement style apartment building full of local gangers of all different colors and flavors. The team unpacks gear in their little 2 bedroom (if you can call it that) flat. Covon then approaches some of the nearest gang leader and asks for some paid security of their flat. After some “rough” Covon style negotiation (read: knocking all five of the gangers unconscious, restraining them, healing them, and then continuing to want to pay the gang for security) a price of 1,500 for a month is agreed on both sides. The Rusty Nails will keep watch over the safe house and alert the team to anything untoward.
The team gets some local flavor info from the Rusty Nails, including a local bar known as Jim’s as a place of potential info. This bar just happens to correspond to the same dive bar Da’ Stroker sent. Heading over to Jim’s, the team meets up with Da’ Stroker, has some drinks, then heads back to the apartment to describe the run in detail.
The team formulates a plan of assault, while still needing to hash out the details such as a path through the carrier, and some more legwork. Sailors from the carrier had a disturbance while on shore leave in Peru (after a fight a bar caught on fire, which then spread to consume the whole block…) forcing the command to limit shore leave to a small section of sailors at a time and for limited time blocks. After this the team decides to break for the evening before starting their diving and climbing lessons in the morning Friday, leading up to a daring infiltration and ex-filtration of a new CAS aircraft carrier on Saturday.

27 Apr 2076
- 1030: The team launchers their assault against the nicely dressed ork bug spirits and after a long battle including grenades, drones, sniper rifles, spells, they overcome the entire group. They recover the heart and make their way out. Luckily Kayless has his Fly Spy drones out and sees a group heading the way they came, so they are able to avoid them. They make their way to a luxury hotel and decide to rest and recuperate.
- 1100: OJ calls Jane Foster and offers to give her the heart for Ehran. She calls back several hours later and agrees to send a representative to retrieve the heart and she offers them the same amount they would have received from Corcoran (50,000¥). OJ also asks for an Ares MP Lancer.
- OJ calls Lotta Blossom and invites her to come to Milan to party for a week.
- Kayless calls Brunhilde to arrange transport back to Seattle. He also invites her to come to Milan to party for a week.
- After they party for the week, they depart for Seattle and arrive in Seattle on 4 May 2076.

24 April 2076 (Friday)
- 0002 Arrive at a small airfield outside Frankfurt.
- OJ summons spirit to find Joann
- Kayless calls Piotr and they are take to Nightclub Paradies at 0145. They book rooms at Villa Kennedy.
- 0200: OJ summons spirit to bind until 0800.
- 0402: Get to rooms and get info.
- 1600: Everyone wakes up.
- 1700: Luigi shows up and takes them to Milan.
- 2330: Arrive in Milan.

- 25 Apr 2076 (Saturday)
- 0000 Get settled into B&B. Kalyess talks with local smuggler sand learns of deaths in Sarajevo.
- 0030: Jian searches for info on group (Joann’s).
- 0100: Jian finds smuggler form Milan to Sarajevo (Dragan).
- 0200: Dragan responds he is able to meet at port in 3 hours for 5000¥.
- 0500: Dragan meets party at port.
- 0530: Jian finds more info about ambush in Sarajevo.
- 0600: Turn around and arrive back in Milan.
- 1400: Synthia Schorders shows up and makes offer which the team refuses. Tells them she is with a different group of the Apep Consortium and that Corcoran is a master shedim who shouldn’t receive the heart.
- 1500: Jian searches for the orgs who ambushed Joann’s group and OJ summons a spirit of air.
OJ summons a spirit and seeks out a chem lab to see if he can get some KE-IV.

26 Apr 2076 (Sunday)
- 0600: OJ meets Jimmy Bob of Doctors Within Borders and give him the samples and they discover at 0900 that it is KE-IV.

27 Apr 2076 (Monday)
- 0930: The team discovers that the insect hive is in the old subways, buys a bunch of gear and make their way into the subway where they discover a strange tunnel with sentries and a couple of guys talking about something.
-

We have a heart

23 Apr 2076 (Thursday)
- 0100: Syndell starts doing legwork on sales of items and discovers there is a sale taking place at Place X, which is a neutral meeting place in the Grand Bazaar. She also looks into 10000 Daggers and finds they are a mercenary unit based out of Istanbul and are also responsible for the security at the bazaar. She checks into the Loose Cannons and finds they are the sellers of the heart. She discovers they have a dead drop in order to contact them. She leaves a message for them to contact her.
- 0900: Neferiez of the Loose Cannons contacts her and they get into an altercation and Syndell ends up hanging up on him.
- 1200 OJ calls Raja and asks him to reserve space in Place X for a soire for 40-50 guests during the same time as the sale.. Kayless also begins looking for two safe houses: one close by and the other a little further out. He also purchases some explosives and detonators as well as some slap patches with Neurostun.

The Plan:
- OJ invites many luminaries to the party and has the strike team from Joanna Krstic acting as security
- Syndell plants fake evidence on the spare commlinks pointing to the Loose Cannons as terrorists who attached the party.
- Kayless gets two bombs ready, one for the “shitty” safe house and one for planting in Place X.
- OJ casts physical mask on Kayless and Covon making them look like member of the loose cannons and they are to enter Place X after the party starts and during the meet.
- 1230: OJ arrives at Place X and ensures it meets his standards. Sundell is in a bag in the back of the Toyota Gopher parked outside the Bazaar so she can monitor matrix traffic.
- 1400: Kayless and Covon show up outside Place X and they discover Yuri and Hiver outside Place X. They decide to attack them and Place X goes into lockdown. Inside, the strike team starts attacking the other Loose Cannons and takes them down along with their customers. OJ is able to retrieve the heart and they make their way to the hotel. The team splits up so they can plant the evidence and such.
Joanna and her team show up at OJs hotel and politely ask for the heart. They get paid for the mission and Joanna departs.
- 1500: OJ gets a call from Raja because a guy by the name of Hamid wants to meet with the team concerning the heart. OJ sets a meet up at the Sultan’s Lappe for 1600.
-1600: The team met with Hamid of the Kurdish resistance and discovered the heart can be used to open a gateway to allow bug spirits to come across. He offered the team 100,000¥ each in order to retrieve it and bring it back to the Kurds.

Off to Istanbul

- 20 April 2076
- The team has spent several weeks to make improvements and receive a call from Jane. She informs them they have a Job offer from an Evan Corcoran in the Federal District of Columbia. All expenses will be paid just to listen to the job. Their flight takes off at 1800 to the FDC.
- 21 April 2076/0400: They land in FDC where a limo picks them up and takes them to one of the nicer hotels in the area. Kayless checks into safe houses in the FDC and thinks the best place to find them would be the Anacostia Barrens.
- 0500: They meet with Corcoran and negotiate for 50,000¥ each, up to a party of 5. Corcoran informs them an artifact lent to the George Washington University for study was stolen. Ehran lent them the artifact (the weird heart they found in Karavan). Corcoran’s agents believe the heart is enroute or already in Istanbul and will be sold there. The team reviews security footage of the heist and believe the group who committed it are The Loose Cannons, the same group they encountered back in Europort.
- 1900: The team boards a private charter aircraft and depart for Istanbul.

- 22 April 2076
- 0520: The team arrives in Istanbul, rent a Toyota Gopher from the local Avis and depart for their hotel, the Sura Hagia Sophia. The Avis employee tells them to contact his cousin Raja if they need anything for their stay.
- 0700: They arrive at their hotel, get settled in and call Raja to see if he can assist in finding one of the Loose Cannons, Yuri, whom they believe would be the one most likely to stand out.
- 0900: They go to the Grand Bazaar and Kayless sets loose his fly spies to see if they can find any of the Loose Cannons via facial recognition. OJ summons a spirit of air and sends it to search for Yuri as well. While they wait for the drones and spirit to do their things, they decide to do a little shopping for information (and stuff). They discover rumors of a sale taking place this coming Saturday at the Grand Bazaar for an item to a group of Kharijites (servants to the great dragon Aden). They also meet Sam (a talismonger) who shows OJ a beautiful, obviously magical, walking cane. OJ assenses it, but cannot determine it’s exact powers, so Sam tells them he will call his cousin (Izzett, son of Kadir) to come look at it for him.
- 1400: Izzett, son of Kadir, arrives at Sam’s shop and they look at the cane. Izzett reveals it has a sordid history and is cursed. Over a century ago, it belonged to a British officer who used it to take out his displeasure on his servants, and all who saw him while he had it, felt he had a presence about him which demanded respect. When he used it during his tirades, he became a vicious person and would not stop unless he exerted a huge amount of self control (or was forced to stop). OJ purchases it and immediately begins the bonding process.
- 1900: OJ also decides to bind his spirit of air and spends the next 6 hour doing so (finished 23 April 2076/0100).

Boom...oops, we forgot something

- 6 Mar 2076
The team is able to move up the stair wells and encounter heavy resistance at the top floor landing. Once they overcome the guards, they find the hallways deserted and make their way into Hiroshi Yakashima’s office. He is there waiting for them and, to their surprise, congratulates them on their efforts. He offers them the chain and OJ lets him know the building is going to be destroyed shortly. Non-plussed, Hiroshi grabs a katana and wakazashi and tells them to take what they wish. He then exits, they take the chain and they make their escape from the facility. Fortunately for them, a pack of dogs attack officers awaiting outside which assists with their own distraction and they make their way back to their safe house. As they depart, they trigger the explosives they’ve planted and down comes the building. On the way to the safe house, OJ suddenly remembers they were supposed to some information out of the host for their Yakuza hosts. They decide to send the children on a run against the Yakashima facility in the bay and the kids come back with pay data.
- 1600: They get back to the safe house and contact Ken about getting out of Neo-Tokyo. He tells them they are to go to the Port Tokyo Harbor and catch a ride on the freighter “Calico Ghost Town” which departs at 2000. The trip will take four days to travel from Neo-Tokyo to Cara’Sir (Portland).
- 7 Mar 2076: The first day goes well and they contact their fixers back in Seattle to order some great.
- 8 Mar 2076: A heavily armed group arrived in a helicopter and attacks the ship. The team is able to take out the attackers and destroy their helicopter in the process.
- 10 Mar 2076: They arrive in Cara’Sir, deliver the chain and travel back to Seattle. Once in Seattle, they take some time to work out, learn some new skills, and do all the fun stuff they need to do to get better.

Sushi chefs are too cool

1 March 2076 (Sunday)
- 0700: The team boards Sergei Viper’s Banshee and make their way to Neo-Tokyo. On the way, the children look into Yakashima and Neo-Tokyo. They discover the CEO they seek collects various artifacts, but he does not appear to be a mage himself. They do discover they’ve recently been working with the Atlantean Foundation on a variety of projects, most of which have to do with gene modifications on their personnel. They discover Yakashima has two different facilities (though there could be more), but their primary target is the one in Neo-Tokyo (not in the bay). They team discovers there are four primary Yakuza groups running things in Neo-Tokyo and decide to approach the Watada-gumi in order to introduce themselves and their intentions.
- Upon arriving in Neo-Tokyo, they discover the news is filled with reports of a rogue band of terrorists who attacked the Yakashima building a day ago. Apparently a well armed terrorist group launched rockets and grenades at the building, then charged in with machine gun fire. NTPD responded within 30 seconds with heavily armed drones and SWAT units and cut them down. All terrorists were killed and investigations were ongoing to identify them.

3 Mar 2076 (Tuesday)
- 1500: The team goes to the Watada House as they heard that is the place to meet the Watada-gumi and they aren’t wrong. OJ ensures they bring an appropriate gift along and are greeted by Ken Muratomi in a private dining room of the Watada House restaurant. OJ successfully navigates through Yakuza etiquette requirements and strikes a deal. The team will be allowed to stay in one of the Watada safe houses and they may conduct their operation against Yakashima, provided they bring Ken data concerning Yakashima’s arrangement with the Atalantean Foundation. While there, OJ asks Kayless to figure out how much they would need to blow up the Yakashima building and asks Ken if he can supply it (for a price of course).
- The team settles into their safe house and gather more legwork on their target so as to determine the best method of entry. They discover the Sushi En will cater lunch this coming Friday at noon, so they decide they are going to hijack the catering truck at the Sushi En parking lot, load it with themselves, and the explosives and bluff their way into the underground parking lot at Yakashima.
- They also have the children probe Yakashima’s computers and discover a person claiming to be Sweetwater in the host. She claims to not know how she got there, but she will help them penetrate the facility, since she knows Kayless will get her out. She tells them she is in the Matrix lab, but believes the item they seek is on the third (top) floor in Yakashima’s office.

6 Mar 2076 (Friday)
- 1115: The team gets dressed in their ballistic masks and SWAT armor and wait for the Sushi chefs to come out to their vehicle. They observe three chefs (one older and two younger) approach the catering truck and OJ confidently and with great intimidation steps in front of them. Using his Japanese language skills, he threatens them…and all three Sushi chefs look upon him and tell him to back off. OJ, taken aback, begins speaking with the eldest and discovers this Sushi chef has no fear of the team and is as hard as stone…the same goes for his two compatriots. OJ then changes tactics and asks if they might be able to get a ride to the Yakashima building. The elderly Sushi chef agrees and tells the team to go ahead and hop in the back with the other two. As they make their way through Neo-Tokyo, one of the younger Sushi chefs makes sushi nigiri for each of the team members to try while the other sharpens his knives. Cosgrey and Covon observe the skill with which each uses their blades and discover these guys are far better with bladed weapons than they are. The elder Sushi chef calls from the front of the vehicle that the team is to not cause any mayhem until after 1300, as that is when the lunch break ends and they receive their tips. Starting anything prior to that will probably result in them losing their tips for the day.
- 1145: The elder Sushi chef guides the truck into the parking garage, makes small talk with the security guard and parks next to the underground entrance. As the team exits the vehicle, they discover they are in an absolute blind spot, the guard and the cameras cannot see them where they parked. The Sushi chef makes an off-hand comment about having done this before. They wish the runners luck and once again remind them to wait until after 1300 and the three Sushi chefs haul in their carts.
- The team begins penetrating the facility and make their way to the Matrix lab where Sweetwater told them they’d find her. On their way to the lab, they find the security cameras are under her control so the team remains undetected. They get into the lab and are not able to find Sweetwater, though she tells them from the main console that she is here. They decide to head down to the detention block to see if she might be there. When they get to the detention block, they encounter two guards and take them out…though not before one of the guards triggers the alarm. Surprisingly, the alarm only remains on for three seconds before it’s silenced. They find Sweetwater in a cell with a VR rig on her head. They safely disconnect her and head on out.
- Kayless goes about setting up the charges to destroy the building and the runners make their way up to the basement level, only to find four guards checking each room. They engage the guards in combat and the alarms go off again. They are able to disable the guards, but the element of surprise is now gone.

Wedding reception fun

- 25 Feb 2076 (Tuesday)
- 1800: Ruthless and OJ head to the arcane library to research the mysterious heart they have in their possession and discover it’s called “The Black Heart”. It is apparently a very old artifact with unknown powers and various magical groups seek it. They decide they need to get it to Ehran and contact him. He is definitely interested in it so asks they bring it safely and secretly to him when they are done retrieving the chain. The team then spends the next couple of days just relaxing and preparing for the wedding reception.

- 27 Feb 2076 (Thursday)
- 1900: The wedding reception begins in the dirigible, the Aman Iki. It is a wonderful affair, with music, dancing, food, speeches and all sorts of celebration! Around midnight, the gift presentation begins with the young couple receiving everything from silks and linens to goats and sheep. Near the end of the presentation, Oni makes an appearance carrying a chest of gems, jewels, silver, and gold. There is a slight disturbance related to his entrance, but OJ quickly calms the tribes and invites his friend to seat himself at the head table.

- 28 Feb 2076 (Friday)
- 0200: After Oni seats himself, Tapio of the Kizilkristal, comes in and shares that their gift (the chain) has been stolen. OJ quickly goes into action, asking Oni to search the dirigible and the team goes off to investigate. Oni returns and says there are seven individuals with devices on the catwalk between the passenger section and the balloons. The team goes charging up and engage the enemy. As they fight their way through the operatives, they discover the devices are actually vector thrust drones, which are launched through the very skin of the dirigible. The team creates a pincer with Oni on one end and Covon leading the way on the other. As Oni advances, the operatives launch their drones as quickly as possible and then leap from the catwalk. One of the operatives is brought down, one of the operatives gets caught in the dirigible machinery, but the rest execute the most wonderful dives from the catwalk and break through the dirigibles outer skin into the open air…where they deploy airfoils from their suits.
- The Kizilkristal interrogate them and discover they are operatives from the Yakashima corporation in Neo-Tokyo and the chain is headed there. Enraged, Prince Ostrander demands the Kizilkristal bring him the head of Yakashima’s CEO and immediately formulates a plan to retrieve the chain. The Kizilkristal dispatch a multi-tribe strike team as soon as they land (0700) and arrange transport for the Prince and his team.

Banshees and wedding...is there a link?

- 24 Feb 2076 (Monday)
- 0700: The team arrives in Karavan and conduct some research on the different tribes which comprise the moving city. They believe their primary focus should bee the Lhasso (the tribe which works on every armament and military piece of gear which comes into town). Before heading off, they ask Ruthless to summon a spirit to search for Stepan Martinez. Kayless also sends out his Fly Spies to see if they can find him using facial recognition. Unfortunately, neither method reveals Stepan’s presence. Kayless takes the lead with the Lhasso and they discover such an individual might go to the Asma to sell such an item.
- 0800: The team decides to head over to the Pjelykosts tribe since they are the magically inclined group. Though they do not find the chain there, they discover Stepan might have gone to the Asma to sell it. A Pjelykost gentleman approaches OJ and Ruthless and works on recruiting them into the tribe’s magical group. After much discussion and seeing the roving library, both agree to join the group the following night.
- 0900: Chang was asked to retrieve information concerning Stepan and reveals he took a job out of the city. It appears he conducted some sort of trade in the city before he left. She also tells them about this nice old lady who needed help carrying some stuff when the lady dropped her cigar box. The team makes their way back to the Banshee and discover an old heart inside the box. Ruthless assesses it, but it doesn’t really exist on the astral plane. Not knowing what it is, they store it in the Banshee, only after Kayless agrees to fetch some cigars for Sergei the rigger.
- 1000: The team gets to the Asma and discover Stepan was there, but the merchants could not afford his asking price: a long range vehicle with several gerry cans of fuel. They sent him to the Seljukok.
- 1030: The team heads over to the Seljukok and meet McGregor, a Scottish weapon smith who sells Kayless a wooden sword with which he may “train” Jian-Min. Unfortunately, Kayless discovers Jian-Min is far more athletic than he expected for a 9 year old.
- The beautiful Princess Yasamine approaches the most charismatic character she spots (OJ) and offers to gift him the information he seeks. Note she offered to gift it to him twice. OJ accepts and realizes only after getting close to the Sultana’s tent that she used the word “gift” twice. They enter the tent, where the Sultana is deep in planning a raid with her various war-chiefs, but sends them off as soon as Yasamine tells her of the great news. The Sultana immediately begins negotiating her dowry with OJ. Though OJ attempts to convince the Sultana that he and his bride need to reside in Seattle due to his other obligations, the Sultana is obstinate and insists the Prince, the future leader of the Seljukok, just lead from the front…or at least set up the wonderful corporate style training structure he described…that really sealed the deal for her. He was able to get her to agree to let him get married (tonight per her choice), but hold off on the reception for two nights, then grant him 1 year and 1 day before he must return to take his place. This translates to OJ returning on 27 Feb 2077 once he ties up what he needs to do!
- The Sultana reveals the chain was gifted to the Kizilkristal who own the two dirigibles which guide the city. The Kizilkristal are not allowed to get rid of any gifts for at least one year from which they received it. She agrees to set up a meet for Prince Levi Ostrander (aka OJ) and his team (now members of the tribe) tomorrow.
- 1800: Between the end of the negations and 1800 Kayless trades his services (automotive) to get the kids food and wedding clothing. The wedding takes place and there are huge celebrations throughout the entire city. You would have thought it was the wedding reception, but that is yet to come!

25 Feb 2076/Tuesday
- 1300: Levi…err…OJ leaves the nuptial tent and purchases some B&E gear for our 9 year old technomancer Jian-Min.
- 1500: The team goes to meet the Kizilkristal and enjoy a tour of the 3 deck dirigible. They also discover the Kizilkristal is hosting the wedding reception in the main ball room the next night and are very happy to treat the newlyweds to a night aboard in the honeymoon suite. OJ broaches the subject of the chain and is able to convince the Kizilkristal rep that they would like to have the chain as a wedding gift. He things it would not break any traditions and both tribes enter negotiations.
- 1700: They finish the dirigible tour and both Ruthless and OJ head over to the Pjelykost and start on the ritual to become members of the magical group. While those two are off doing that, Kayless calls Rorschach, Sequoia, and Jane Foster to share the wonderful news about OJs wedding. Jane seems really surprised and they discover they are all in Karavan right now. Jane meets OJ and Covon to hang out with them. Unfortunately, Jian-Min decides he’s going to sneak out of the Banshee and explore the town on this own…causing his adopted father no end of frustration….Kayless now realizes how difficult raising young, technomancer children can be. Jane takes pity on him and sends one of her spirits to escort the young child back to the Banshee.

Second Tigers, Drunken Monkeys, and Wendigos named Yuri

21 Feb 2076 (Friday)
- 2100: Syndell decides she’s going to hack into Bennett’s home node and try to find any files related to the compass. She successfully cuts through the node and discovers there was a theft at her mansion a few days ago. The team reviews the video footage and see three individuals with the same Chinese symbols on their outfits, which translates to “Second Tigers”. They decide to go to bed and check into this in the morning.

22 Feb 2076 (Saturday)
- 1300: Syndell wakes up and she and Kayless review the footage again together. She does some more matrix searches and finds they are a team of runners who usually hang out at the Drunken Monkey, which turns out to me a merc bar.
- 2200: The team heads down to the Drunken Monkey and find one of the Second Tigers hanging out there with about another five customers…a really light night at the bar. They get into a verbal altercation with Lung Ping, the Second Tiger leader and lure him outside where they capture him and take him to be questioned. After questioning him, they discover the Second Tiger’s decker must have swiped the chain while they tried to make their way out of the mansion. The decker, Stepan Martinez, departed for Karavan a couple days ago to look for work. This is typical of him. The team asks around and discover Karavan is a traveling city and it’s currently on the Afghan border. While conducting their legwork, they discover Sergei happens to be headed that way. They contact Sergei who agrees to take them along and will depart the next day at 1000.

23 Feb 2076 (Sunday)
- 1000: The runners meet with Sergei, load up and take off for what sounds like a long trip.
- 1200: Unfortunately, while trying to skirt the Maya Cloud around Tibet, a tendril of magic reaches out and causes the Banshee to crash land in the Himalayas. The team sends out spirit scouts and discover there is some sort of dual natured creature not far away. They set up a defensive position and both Sergei and Kayless begin working in shifts to get the Banshee up and running again. Needless to say, it’s exceptionally cold up there!
- 1700: The spirits come under attack from a large furry creature who is exceptionally stealthy. The team has one heck of a time trying to hit the creature, but Ruthless saves the day when she stunbolts it a couple of times, knocking it unconscious. They secure the creature and discover he is able to speak. Yuri the wendigo reveals he was extremely hungry and didn’t mean to scare the team. He begs for food and the team gives him rations. After the banshee is repaired, the team releases Yuri with some of their rations.

24 Feb 2076 (Monday)
- 0700: The banshee finally comes into a valley and the team finds Karavan. Sergei speaks with the various “aircraft controllers” and gets permission to land. As the banshee approaches, their commlinks chirp and they discover the local laws (the yassa) downloaded. They review them and Syndell reminds everyone to NOT accept gifts. The children begin asking various questions about the yassa’s meaning and Kayless does his best to explain it to them.

Let's play pirates or submariners...or something like that.

-19 Feb 2076 (Wednesday)
- 1800: The team contacts Beauregard and agree to meet him at 2000. Syndell sends a message to Shadow to let him know about the TM children…after she berates Kayless about suddenly becoming a father and not taking proper steps to protect the children.
- 2000: They meet with Beauregard and discover his fiancee (Tia Ying) is going to be forced to marry a local sheung fa (overboss) of her triad. He knows where she is to get married and that she is currently held at his minions on the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. He can provide assistance in penetrating the facility, but reveals the compass is not going to be delivered until 1500 the day of the gala and it will be delivered via the boat docks beneath the museum.
- 2200: Syndell starts conducting matrix searches on various topics and is able to reveal the rough time and probable route Tia Ying’s escorts will take with the boat. They contact a local smuggler, Sergei Vipin, to see if he has a submersible which they plan on using to ambush the enemy boat. He does and they meet him at the docks around 0800 the next morning.

- 20 Feb 2076 (Thursday)
- 0830: The team uses a multi-prong attack to disable the boat, emerge from the submersible and rescue Tia Ying in true pirate fashion…without the sabers, cannons, and swinging from ropes…okay, maybe not true pirate fashion.
- 0900: They get back to the hotel and start researching information Beauregard gave them about the current owner of the compass, Hsui Li Bennett. They discover she has a large mansion and outsourced security. They discover her security will escort the compass to the docks via boat and they decide to repeat their previous success.

- 21 Feb 2076 (Friday)
- 1330: They meet with Sergei, ride out to attack the escort team and…succeed just as easily as they did the first time. They contact Ehran who tells them he will meet them at the hotel this evening.
- 2000: They meet with Ehran and discovers the compass is the right one…but the chain attached to it is a fake. Without the chain, it’s “almost” useless. Ehran tells them they must go and get the chain. The team wants more money, so Ehran agrees to assist them with the various “issues” they face, e.g. helping OJ lose the bone spikes, helping Kayless find a Delta clinic, etc.

Geez, archeology is tough!

- 5 Jan 2076 (Sunday)
- The team emerges from the eastern pyramid and face some serious opposition on their way out. Fortunately for them, Covon and Syndell are still waiting for them and they escape. They make their way back to Sarajevo and catch a flight back to Seattle with a smuggler whom Jane arranged to meet them.
- The runners take some time to purchase some equipment, conduct some training, and all those fun things they do during downtime.

- 16 Feb 2076
- They receive a call from a Johnson asking they meet at a corner cafe late in the evening. When the team arrives, an elf in make up runs up to them, transfers 5000¥ to their accounts and runs off. To their dismay, a security team comes running around the corner and mistakes them for the elf for some reason. After a brief firefight, Ehran the Scribe shows up and offers them a ride in his limousine while they discuss business.
- He wants them to travel to Hong Kong to retrieve Shantaya’s Compass from the Hong Kong Museum of Ancient Artifacts. He offers them a private ballistic shuttle, hotel, and transportation in Hong Kong. They agree to go and complete the mission for 25,000¥. He also offers an option to get equipment for them instead of conducting a cash payout for any item they desire. King takes advantage of it and gets SWAT armor with a helmet and a better fake SIN. Ruthless requests a sword focus and a fake SIN. Payless and Covon both go for fake SINs.

- 18 Feb 2076/0015: The team gets to the airport, loads their gear and takes off for Hong Kong.

- 19 Feb 2076 (Wednesday)
- 1000/The group lands safely in Hong Kong and meet with Penelope Wang, who is an assistant to Ehran. They check their equipment and load up in a diplomatic flagged Nightsky. They are brought to a luxury hotel (The Peninsula Hotel), check in and decide to have lunch and contact Hacker A to do some research on the hotel and compass. They discover there is a big event to be held at the Museum of Ancient Art in a few days, at which the compass will be displayed. They ask Penelope to arrange a special visit to the museum so they can check it out.
- 1500/They arrive at the museum and receive a guided tour. During Kayless’ drone scouting, he encounters two children living in the air ducts. After some confusion, he discovers they are Technomancer orphans. Kayless arranges for the children to leave the museum and takes them back to the hotel, where he decides he’s going to adopt them. The children perform some actions, such as transferring funds from a pair of Atlantean Foundation Reps to Kayless’ commlink. They also order a lot of “food” (read: junk in front of it) and act as typical 11 and 9 year old orphan technomancer children. The team discovers the kids know Beauregard (who works at the museum) is having some problems and might be willing to help the runners in exchange for help.

Sneaking (v): depends on whom you ask

- 4 Jan 2076/1900: The team dresses up and heads off to the gala. They rub elbows with the various high ranking magical and educational leaders of the world. Kayless plants his drones in various areas and is finally able to get them into an air duct which also opens into the servants passages.
While planting their drones, they notice the Apep Consortium (who sent their buddy Georgiy Abolev) also planting cameras.
The team finds the “secret” entrance to the passages and manage to sneak into them, using both Ruthless and Horra as distractions. Once back there, both Kayless and OJ must work together to crack the various security devices protecting the doors. They succeed (barely) and discover a secret library/ritual area downstairs. They find the Phaistos disc and in true Indiana Jones fashion, swap it out for a book (of similar weight). They sneak out with the disc and hand it off to Jane, who reveals she must conduct a ritual to discover the true discs location…it appears this is a copy made with elements from the original disc.
Low and behold, the trail leads to an archeological dig in Bosnia, to be exact, the Bosanska Pirimida Sunca about 30 km north of Sarajevo. They do some research and discover it’s a wartorn land with UN forces attempting to enforce the peace. They also discover Aztechnology has been leading a dig at the pyramid site.
- 5 Jan 2076 (Sunday): The team arrives in Sarajevo, do some more legwork, get a Humvee and head off to the dig site. They set themselves up on the ridgeline near the northern pyramid and observe a veritable tent city/armed camp set up between four pyramids. Their best estimate is that there are 300+ individuals here. They also discover (to their dismay) that the area is an astral shallow, which means all magical effects are clearly visible to anybody.
They decide to leave Covon with Kayless’ sniper rifle on the ridge with Jane. The rest of them decide to sneak to the pyramid they need to enter, overcome the two guards, and enter the tunnels below. They discovered the tunnels thanks to Kayless’ drones.
They sneak upon the guards, but the only one able to achieve surprise is Ruthless who casts a Flamethrower spell unsuccessfully. Horra takes the initiative and opens up with her unsilenced machine pistol (oops…did I mention this is a valley?). Kayless is up next and decides he will follow suit and opens up with his unsilenced automatic shotgun (oops…did I mention this is a valley?). Ruthless, not wanting to be left out, draws her Ruger Super Warhawks and opens fire as well…do I need to mention it is also unsilenced? Do I need to mention…it’s a valley? OJ remains in stealth mode and attacks with his rapier. They finally take down the two guards and enter the pyramid.
The team descends about 200 meters and follow the tunnel to a large chamber. To their surprise, it’s filled with trees, water, plants, and birds…though the drone saw (and sees) nothing but a big black cavern. OJ shoves Kayless through the portal to the chamber and discovers it’s some sort of Astral Gateway…since Kayless’ body is now laying in a pile on the floor, but they can clearly see him standing in the idyllic area. They all enter and the same thing happens to their bodies.
They meander through and see the Phaistos disc upon a pedestal which is on a dais. There is a male and female elf standing to either side of it. After an odd conversation about creators, anguished, and other stuff, they tell the elves of the party that one of them must offer to become an anguished in order to receive the disc. There’s is much debate and OJ finally agrees. He immediately falls to the ground in pain and spikes erupt from his skin…from this entire body. They destroy his clothes and armor and he discovers they do the same when he returns to his body.
With the true Phaistos disc in hand, the idyllic area disappears and they decided to head out the eastern passage, in the general direction of their waiting humvee and Covon.

Gala (n): another reason to dress up!

- 2 Jan 2076/0700: The team arrives in Frankfurt, AGS and find out the Faustians have a gala scheduled for Saturday (4 Jan) evening. This gala has apparently been in planning for quite some time, but Jane is able to get them tickets to it through one of her many well connected contacts. Kayless contacts the hackers and asks them to check into a variety of topics.
- 0900: Kayless and Ruthless decide to head down to the Hauptwache (the main pedestrian zone in Frankfurt) to check to see how much they can get for the jewels from Oni. The jeweler reveals the jewels are worth 40,000¥, but only offers 2000¥ for them. They decide to sell him the jewels and head off to the hotel.
- During the downtime in Frankfurt, OJ decides he wants to learn to ritually spell cast and Kayless starts reading up on the proper ways to smuggle.
- 1300: Hacker A calls with info concerning Meyer (the recently deceased head of the Faustians) and AZT.
- 1800: The team reaches the Faustian manor (where the gala will be held) and see there is still a huge security presence there, to include snipers, patrollers (biodrones), wandering patrols, and strange bunnies…yes, little furry bunnies.
- 1900: The team heads over to the red light district and get some information on the Interpol investigation into Meyer’s death. Ruthless also summons a spirit to search for the Phaistos disc, which leads directly to the manor. However, the barriers in place won’t let it narrow down the exact location.

- 3 Jan 2076/0100 (Friday): Hacker B calls back with info related to the Dr. Faustus society, various artifacts, and Hans Winokur (the temporary leader of the society). OJ summons and binds a beast spirit and the rest of the team just relax.
- 1500: Hacker A gives them info on who attended Meyers funeral and later that day, more info about Meyer.

- 4 Jan 2076/0300 (Saturday): Hacker B calls in with the manor floor plans and later that morning, info on the Frankfurt Bank Association’s big party being held the same night.

Jailbreak

1 Jan 2076
- The runners are at the Loose Cannon’s warehouse and decide to do some more digging into the Regulus Detention Center. They contact their hacker contacts and give them an entire list to research. They also ask Widget (the Loose Cannons’ hacker) to research the same. After waiting a few hours, they decide they don’t want to wait any longer.
- Priest decided he had so much fun at the university in Hamburg, he left the party and went back to school.
- Knowing this job would take more manpower than they currently have, Covon reaches out to former associates (King and Horra) and ask them to come along for this mission. They gladly agree. King is a Nocturne (Night One) who used to serve with Covon on the Tir border. Horra is also an elf whom Covon met in Seattle.
- 0600 The team climbs into the chopper and they fly off to the detention center. They are able to land without issue and discover all AROs are in Dutch (which none of them happen to speak or read). Fortunately, the Loose Cannons tell them which door to enter.
They get to the sally port door and once again face a language barrier, but their new member, King, uses his knowledge of German to get a rough translation. Once they enter, OJ is very happy to find the guards also speak English…after all, this is the Netherlands!
The team discovers they’ve arrived during morning chow and see a long line of prisoners entering the chow hall. Two guards take their “prisoner” to in processing (who happens to be the Face from the Loose Cannons). Kayless looses his drone to try to figure out where Malcolm is located, and they discover solitary is behind one of the security doors leading from the main area. They ask Widget to hack the door, but she fails repeatedly…so she sends her sprite to access it. The sprite not only opens the door, but is also able to gain control of every door in the facility.
The team locates Malcolm and begin cutting through the door, which alerts security and the entire facility goes into lockdown. The runners are under concealment and get nervous when two guards enter solitary. King jumps one, but is dismayed when the guy shrugs off the damage. OJ tells Kayless to go ahead and partake in the combat while he continues cutting through the door. The team fires and fires and fires round after round into the guards, but they can’t seem to penetrate the armor. Oni shows up, which causes one of the guards to flee into a cell and lock himself in and the rest of the team focus fire on the other one and finally take him down. They know the alarm has gone off, so they take Malcolm and get out.
Kayless takes control of the chopper, but an inner voice tells him to come back and land…which he begins obliging. Widget then takes control of the chopper and she too takes the chopper to land…so OJ takes control of her thoughts and convinces her to fly away.
-0700 They make it back to the warehouse and discover Malcolm didn’t want to be rescued…he’s afraid an SK team is after him and that he doesn’t have much longer to live. He tells the runners about sending the disc to Frankfurt to a Hermann Meyer.
The team does some research and discovers the late Hermann Meyer was found dead, apparently killed in some sort of ritual. He was also a member of the Dr. Faustus society. All of Meyer’s possessions now belong to the Faustus society, which includes his manor house in Frankfurt. Of course, in a mere two nights, Hans Winokur, the current leader of the society is holding a huge gala there.
The runners decide it’s time to head to Frankfurt and work with Jane to get transportation there. Kayless is able to find another smuggler who is able to transport his drones to Frankfurt.
Oh, did I fail to mention the team left the Loose Cannon’s Face at the Regulus Detention Center?

Got Wagner, now off to Europort

29 Dec 75
- 1400 The team makes it back to the Hotel Stella Maris and speak with Wagner. He informs them that he will give them the information he has if they get him out of Hamburg. They agree and arrange transport for him back to the UCAS with Brunhilde. Once they place him in the transport, he reveals the thief’s name is Malcom Carella from Europort. He is the leader of the Loose Cannons.
- 1900 They meet with Red Anya to sell off the items they recovered asks Jane to get them some travel visas (which will be ready 30 Dec 75 at 1900).

30 Dec 75
- 0800 The team wakes up after a wonderful sleep and contact one of the deckers to research the Loose Cannons. At noon they receive the information that they usually hang out at the Rhapsody Blues, a bar in Europort.
- 1900 They get their visas and drive to Europort and check into the Bastion Hotel around 2300.

31 Dec 75
- 0000 Ruthless summons a spirit of air and sends it to search for the disc…once again to no avail. They also ask the deckers to check into local New Year’s Eve customs and get more info on Malcolm.
- 0800 The deckers have the information they requested and they discover Malcolm is currently being held in protective custody at the Regulus detention center. They also discover Corolla is set to be moved to general populace from solitary in 48 hours (2 Jan 76).
- 2130 they get to Rhapsody, speak with the owner, a formorian from Scotland and discover the Loose Cannons have a meet that evening. They decide to listen in on them and then follow them home. They overhear that the Loose Cannons are planning a raid on the detention center to rescue their leader (Corella). The team thinks it’s a horrible idea so decide to meet them at the Loose Cannons’ hangar to offer them a better plan. The Loose Cannons’ plan is to insert a prisoner transfer, land on the helipad, then use overwhelming force to break him out.

1 Jan 76
- 0330 The team meets the Loose Cannons at the warehouse and they offer the optional plan, which the Loose Cannons like. OJ convinces them they have to go this morning, while people might be hung over and while there might be a more skeleton crew at the detention center.

Woohoo, a non-feral city!

25 Dec 75 (Merry Christmas)
- Jane contacts the team and asks them to meet Mr. Aaron Johnson at club Infinity for a job offer. She explains he is her employer.
- 2300 The team goes to Infinity and meet Mr. Johnson for the first time and discover he is none other than Ehran the Scribe, former Prince of Tir Tairngire. He asks them to retrieve the Phaistos Disc, which was stolen from the Heraklion Museum. He agrees to pay them 10,000¥ and a 60,000¥ finder’s fee. He explains that Jane has a hound on her trail and has already departed for Hamburg, AGS. They are to meet her there in 72 hours. Ehran gives them 5000¥ each for travel expenses. He informs them they are to meet with a contact in Hamburg named Hardy Wagner, who can provide them information concerning the thief.

26 Dec 75
- 0000 OJ booked a first class flight to Hamburg and will arrive at 1000 local. The rest of the team reach out to Rhinegold to see if they can get a smuggler willing to take them from Seattle to Hamburg. Rhinegold puts them in contact with Brunhilde, a Japanese smuggler, who wears a helmet over her long curly blond locks and carries a spear at all times. She is more than happy to take them over for the right price.
- 0400 The remainder of the team meet Brunhilde and they take off for Hamburg. She plays Wagner throughout the duration of the flight and Kayless engages in a very long discuss with Covon about Tir history, politics, and culture…of which Covon is very knowledgable.

27 Dec 75/1200
- The team arrives in Hamburg where OJ meets them with a VW Sleipnir minivan (for them). He was able to rent a BMW 400GT for himself and Covon. OJ spent the entire day sight-seeing and overall enjoying himself as he familiarized himself with Hamburg. Jane isn’t due to arrive until 29 Dec at midnight.
-1400 They get to the hotel, unload, and take showers. They decide they need some basic equipment and discover a local fixer named Red Anya. They meet with her about an hour later and ask her for a few items. She agrees to get them the items and asks them to come back the following day.
- 2100 The team decides to go out for the evening with Ruthless and Priest finding the local university and joining in parties there. OJ and Kayless head off to the Tower Bar to find out a bit more about the local scene and what’s going on. OJ and Kayless call it an early evening and get back to the hotel at 0300 (28 Dec) and Ruthless and Priest roll in at 0600 after having had breakfast with the college students.

28 Dec 75
- 1500 The runners meet up with Red Anya and get their requested items. They return to the hotel and make reservations for dinner at a local restaurant (for 2315).
- 2315 They get to the restaurant and begin having a nice meal.

29 Dec 75
- 0000 Jane arrives and they go over their plans. They call the number for Wagner and get a voice drop instead of a live person. Jane provides them Wagner’s address, so they depart for there arriving at 0100. They discover Wagner’s place has been burned via phosphorous grenades and different accelerants. They find nothing of use at the apartment. It is at this point, Kayless sends some fly spy drones to follow a local Hansec patrol. After recording them for several hours, they discover nothing of value.
- 0600 Jan Brecht contacts OJ and informs him they are to meet tomorrow at a place and time he will designate, but they must come unarmed and install a CARE package to their commlinks. Oj “agrees”, but they decide they will try to find Hardy via a different method.
- 0700 Kayless calls the deckers Ehran offered to provide assistance and asks them to research a variety of topics, including Wagner. They discover he is a two timing info broker connected with the Penose (a Dutch gang) and is good friends with the Water Rats (a local smuggler gang). They finally get a pic of Wagner and decide to send spirits to search for him. They also send a spirit to find the disc (to no avail).
- 1200 The spirits track Wagner to a location 20 meters below the streets of Hamburg, directly below a park. They contact the decker and get maps for the sewer system and decided to head in.
- 1300 They get to the park, find a manhole cover, and follow the sewers down until they reach a bunker door. They are able to cut through the bunker door and discover Wagner hiding down there. As they are speaking with him, a team ambushes them, knocking OJ unconscious and causing some minor injuries to the runners. Upon awakening, OJ discovers his bound spirit has now gone free and is willing to negotiate a pact with him. They get the heck out of there after collecting the enemy team’s equipment and head back to the hotel.

Woohoo, downtime!

20 Oct 75
- The team finally has all the pieces together, the map and the sextant. They give Jane the sextant who departs for parts unknown. Jane arranged for them to spend some time at a local resort, lodging and basic food paid. Before they take her up on her offer, they fly their GMC Banshee with Sonora back to Chicago to collect the bounty.
- They land in Chicago, turn her over, then make their way back to San Bernardino so they can take some much needed rest.

21 Oct 75
- 0000 they check into the lodge, get some rest and begin working on doing things such as learning new spells, binding foci, and improving skills.

27 Oct 75
- The team head back to Seattle and OJ starts selling everything they don’t need, including the Banshee. They continue improving skills and purchase new items, including some cool cyberware for Kayless. While recuperating, Kayless ask Rorschach to look into Sweetwater’s disappearance, but they are still not able to determine what happened. An interview with her university dorm roommate reveals some men in black came in the day after she disappeared and took all her stuff.

24 Dec 75
- The team has completed all their training, healing, cyber installs, and are now ready to get back in the game. After all, OJ needs more money to make reach his retirement goal!

Are we there yet?

- 19 Oct 2075
- 1500 M: After departing the campground, the team heads back to the chop shop they discovered upon arrival and ask the guys at the shop if they can repair his drone. The guys are able to get it quickly repaired and they decide to head off. Before doing so, they have Relnar check on the next stop, Day Fork.
- 1845M: the team arrives in Day Fork and start schmoozing the locals. They discover Winding Joe is transporting Sonora and her team to San Bernardino and they discover the route he would normally take after they speak with Blitzen (another smuggler). They have a long conversation with her and find passing through the Mojave Desert is the fastest, though not safest route to take.
- 2100 M: They take off through the Mojave and through sheer luck and good rigging skills, they make it to Ontario, CFS almost three hours before Sonora is scheduled to arrive.

20 Oct 2075
- 0640: The team lands in Ontario, CFS where Jane’s contacts from the Ancients picks them up and takes them to a safe house in San Bernardino. They ask the Ancients where someone might land a Banshee, so the Ancients lead them to three different places. Payless determines two places are likely landing spots and OJ checks to see which one would make the better ambush site. After checking all three, they decide the third is the best and go about making the 1st one totally unusable (demolitions and spirits). They then set up their ambush at the third site.
- 0850: A couple of humvees show up with several gang members and a couple of guys dressed in military armor. Once the Banshee shows up, Sonora and her last surviving team mate get out…only her team mate falls and breaks her neck…oops. OJ steps out and informs the other party that the sextant belongs to him…at which point the ambush is sprung. Through judicious use of drones, spirits, luck, and lots of ammo, the team overcomes all the obstacles and defeats all the opponents. They knock Sonora out and take one of the gang members alive. They then decide it’s time to head back to the safe house and ask the Banshee rigger for a ride, who just so happens to be Rhinegold, whom they met back at Sweetwater. No explanation was given as to why Winding Joe wasn’t the smuggler Sonora arrived with.

Shotgun wedding (or how to get a Banshee cheap)

18 Oct 2075
- 1000M: Jane has finished her next ritual and revealed the sextant is in Denver already.
- 1400M: The team, well rested after an 8 hour nap, wake up to pot roast, potatoes, carrots, and fresh apple pie. They take their fill and discover their rigger is missing. Upon checking around, they find the Stoffels came and grabbed him a few hours ago and took him away. Further investigation leads them to discover Papa Stoffel took him to the local church to force him to marry his pregnant daughter (apparently, this is a regular stop for Ricky). OJ goes to the airfield to speak with other riggers about possibly using them to go the rest of the way to Denver…however, another plan forms in his mind. The team go to the church, where Stoffel family guard it with shotguns and determination. They attend the wedding (on the groom’s side of course), attend the reception, then try to convince Papa Stoffel to let Ricky take them the rest of the way to Denver for a nice big payment for the happy couples future. Papa Stoffel’s having none of this. His new son-in-law is staying right there in town, living in an addition built onto the family home, and is going to learn how to farm. Once he’s earned enough, the family’s going to help him build a nice home for him and his new family…all nice and close to Papa Stoffel and his brothers. OJ’s mind goes into overdrive and they offer to purchase the Banshee to help the young couple start right…so off they head to the airfield. While there, OJ subtly influences Papa Stoffel to sell the Banshee to them for a mere 50,000¥ to start the new family off right. Amazingly, Papa Stoffel agrees, which angers Ricky enough that he breaks out to throttle OJ. Well, fortunately for OJ, the Stoffel boys know how to use the butt end of a rifle just as well as the shooting end! The deal is made, money transferred and the team get the hell out of Sweetwater.
- 1900M: The team lands in the Sioux sector of Denver and Kayless begins looking for someplace to get an SUV. They eventually find a rental place and get it on their security company account.
- 2100M: The team has Relnar start searching for auctions or special events.
- 2200M: Jane starts the ritual and OJ attempts to bind a spirit.
- 19 Oct 2075
- 0200M: Jane finishes the ritual and they narrow it down to the Ute sector, in fact a very remote part of the Ute sector, nearly on the outside border.
- 1400M: The runners get over to that side of the Ute sector and discover a campground filled with yurts. They discover the last one, nearest the forest has Sonora in it. Therefore, they begin sneaking around the campground, through the woods…and discover another team set up with LMGs pointed into the campground. They decide to start taking out the gunners…and the whole place erupts in suppressive fire, shotguns, SMG fire, yelling/screaming poorly clad people running around, pillars of fire going off….yeah, chaos. In the end, seven local mercs and a dozen or so Triad soldiers are dead or dying. They team loses some ammo and a drone to the action. They also see three guys all dressed in black, chanting in Latin, who were responsible for the pillars of flame, but also healing the people. They decide not to engage them in any form. Unfortunately, just as they finished the last of the mercs, they hear and see another Banshee in the woods. They barely spot Sonora getting into it and it takes off before they are able to stop it. They check out the dead mercs and discover Sonora is on her way to San Bernardino, CFS…looks like another trip is ahead for the team.

Siege, travel, battle, travel...sounds like a series set in New Zealand

17 Oct 2075
- The entire team is finally in Chicago and ready to rock and roll!
- 1410L: OJ and Syndell finally make it to Chicago and meet up with Kayless and the boys from Calumet. After some discussion, OJ and Syndell tell Kayless he has joined up with the wrong side. They feel the the Greek and the mafia are not exactly the best people with whom to side…so they come up with a plan….
- THEPLAN: they contact the Spire and The Union and decide to assist them with defeating the Mafia. OJ convinces the Mafia’s leader (a large troll, who has seen far too many King of the Rings movies that the best plan is to charge up to the front gates with a large amount of explosives strapped to another troll, then detonate it. In addition, all the Mafia forces need to charge at the same time so as to confuse the sensors on the weapons drones. Finding this a brilliant plan, the troll sets his men to work and they end up charging in. Of course, OJ and Syndell arranged for the Union troops to show up after the charge is under way, so they can mop up what’s left. Kayless is in charge of distracting a group of mafia soldiers on the other side of the Spire with his drone…which does distract them…in fact, so well they get slaughtered.
- 1600L: The Spire is safe, the Union soldiers have mopped up, and The Greek is in custody. Wingman, the Spire leader informs the team that Sonora already left and is on her way to Denver. He offers to take them there via one of his riggers, Ricky Steelsky. The team loads up up into Ricky GMC Banshee and they make their way to Denver.
- 1900L: The Banshee crashes suddenly and the team discovers the electronics were fried by a couple of Thunderbirds. After several hours (2200L), the Banshee is back up and running.
- 18 Oct 2075
- 0100L: The Banshee starts descending for an unknown reason, so Syndell and Kayless check on the rigger, only to discover he is unconscious and an unknown technomancer is attempting to land the Banshee. Syndell sees their destination is an open field filled with a welcoming party. Both of them enter the Matrix and being a full blown assault to take the Banshee back. They eventually succeed and Kayless is able to fly the Banshee to the next stopping point.
- 0130L: Ricky is finally coming out of his unconsciousness and informs the team this is his refueling point. They need farmer Bob to enter the codes (biometric actually) into the refueling station in the garage, so OJ and Kayless go to the farmhouse to find him. Oops, the drones discover farmer Bob’s family dead in the kitchen with mysterious sores covering their bodies…but no farmer Bob. OJ decided to just crack open the security on the fuel and they begin dispensing it. Before they are able to finish fueling (80% complete), two pick up trucks filled with armed people show up at the farm and jump out. OJ comes up with plan to distract these people long enough that they are able to finish fueling, jump in, and get the hell out of there. OJ’s spirit lets him know the leader of this group has this weird taint to his aura.
- 0430M: The team lands in Sweetwater, where they have a layover to refuel, rest, and wait for patrols to pass. Bus driver George takes the team to the local diner, where they enjoy such things as eggs, bacon, coffee, flapjacks, and all sorts of good home cooking. Thereafter, bus driver George takes them to the boarding house, where Georgette leads them to their quaintly appointed rooms. OJ is just about crawling out of his skin right now since he’s not sure he likes home made quilts, doilies and oil lamps. The team then passes out from their exhausting trip and full stomachs.

Man, it's cold out here!

15 Oct 2075
- The team has spent the last few months recuperating from their trip to Lagos. They have attended classes, shopped for new items, spent time in martial arts courses.
- Ruthless receives a call from Jane Foster about a potential job, so they arrange to meet at the Gray Line in Chicago to cover the details.
- 1800: Ruthless, Kayless, and Covon meet her there and they discover she wants to continue the hunt for the sextant. She tells them the sextant is in Chicago, but she’s not sure how long it will be there. She’s not able to provide further details here, because she’s afraid there might be ears listening. The team happily agrees to 10,000¥ each and another 100,000¥ for the team upon successfully retrieving the sextant. Note: Go and retrieve the artifact will get the team paid. Travel and lodging will be provided. She tells the team to meet her at the airport in no more than four hours so they can get on their way to Chicago.
- 1840: Having discovered it will be negative 15 degrees Celsius in Chicago thanks to a freak winter storm, the team meet up with Eugene to get some cold weather gear and trade items. They get fitted, pick out a whole lot of item, then make their way to the airport. While heading to Eugene’s, they decide they need a decker for the job and contact Relnar who agrees to do so for 1000¥ per day.
- 2010: They arrive at the airport and finally depart once the plane is loaded. During the flight, Jane reveals the map will identify the general area of the sextant, but the ritual takes four hours and is extremely taxing. She reveals that a mage named Sonora has the sextant and Sonora has been on the run. She tells them that there are others after the map, but doesn’t know who the other parties are.
16 Oct 75
- 0345 local: They arrive in Chicago, pick up their rental SUV and make their way to the hotel 5.5. They discover how poor the Chicago infrastructure truly is when they leave the airport grounds and must plow through snow drifts and poor roads. At the exit ramp, they discover the Tollkeepers, who accept their toll payments and they check in.
- 0600 local: Jane can now do a ritual with the Piri Ries map to determine the general location of the sextant and it reveals a 10 km x 20 km area of Chicago. Jane and Ruthless both take part in the ritual and when it’s done at 1000 local, Ruthless discovers she has been drained of all magic. Jane explains that this is a side effect and her magic should return in 12 hours.
- 1000 local: With the ritual complete, Kayless tasks Relnar with conducting Matrix searches on a variety of subjects. They hang out in the hotel.
- 1800 local: Ruthless has her magic back.
- 1900 local: Kayless and Covon head to the Pog Mo Thoin, a trading post, to see if they can get some information from Sean, the owner. In addition, Jane tells them to ask Sean for a new t-shirt size small since hers got destroyed in Lagos. Kayless decides to leave Relnar, Ruthless , and a drone there to protect the map (Relnar is still doing matrix work anyway).
- 2000 local: Kayless come upon a group of people who are under attack by wild dogs. They dispatch the dogs fairly quickly, though one of the women is lost to the pack. They escort the remaining people to their commune and provide them some supplies and also receive some information concerning the area.
- 2200 local: They finally arrive at the Pog Mo Thoin and speak with Sean. He tells them he hasn’t heard of this woman, but a good place to get information would be the Archangel Bounty Redemption Center. They have an active Matrix connection and bounty hunters should know something, maybe. Relnar comes back with information on Sonora: she’s a big league, international runner who takes a lot of Aztechnology jobs. She’s a female Latina mage, but as far as description, well, no one really knows what she loos like because her face keeps changing. She apparently uses altskin whenever she’s in LA, which is where she normally works out of. She also has a solid team to support her.
- 2300 local: Kayless and Covon get to the ABRC and Kayless subscribes to the local bounty boards. They discover there is a 50,000¥ bounty on her and 5000¥ on each of her team mates. They find out a bounty hunter by the name Bosco is also looking for her and they go into the sleeping area to check him and the rest of the bounty hunters out. They identify the likely magically active and then make their way back to the hotel.
17 Oct 75
- 0100 local: Covon and Kayless get back to hotel and Jane begins her ritual at 0200 (without Ruthless).
- 0600 local: Ritual done and sextant is still in the general area. Relnar’s searches reveal that Sonora might be trying to find a way out of the city. He finds there are a couple of smuggler groups on the area, one at Calumet (mafia run) and one at the Spire. The one at Calumet is lead by Don Roland “The Greek” Stephanopoulos. They decide to head to Lake Calumet to check to see if Sonora was there.
- 0900 local: Ruthless, Kayless, and Covon head off into the snow (with the SUV) and encounter a pack of gabriel hounds about two hours into their trip. They didn’t realize they were gabriel hounds, except Ruthless astrally perceived them and saw the deception. They are able to drive them off easily.
- 1100 local: The team reaches Lake Calumet and get a quick introduction to “the Greek”. Between Kayless quick thinking and Ruthless Doppel Keks, they earn the admiration of “the Greek”. He says they turned the girl away and she probably went to the Spire. They need help right now because they have besieged the Spire and don’t have a way to break the siege. They will be happing to help the runners get her, if the runners help them break the siege at the Spire. Ruthless and Kayless both agree, so they hop into a chopper, drop off some guards for the hotel, then finally land at the Spire shortly after 1400L.
- 1410 local: Time to take the Spire!

Ghouls and formal attire

5 Jul 2075/0001 (Friday)
- Syndell arrives in Lagos and contacts OJ to let the rest of the team know she’s in country. She makes her way to the Novo Porto hotel to find Calas recovering from his earlier bout with food poisoning.
- OJ, Ruthless, and Covon decide to head down to the hotel to pick up the remainder of the team, then fly to the palace with the statue and prisoner in tow. Unfortunately the truck runs out of gas on the way down, so they have to hoof it. Fortunately for the team, judicious use of a spirit of air gets the trio there rapidly.
- 0200-0400 The entire team flies to Ife where the Oni’s advisor rewards them mightily with 100,000 Naira….after OJ gets offended with the first offer of 50,000.
-0600-0800 The team flies back to Lagos and OJ convinces Syndell of the need to go shopping….which Syndell gladly does.
-1000 After a fruitful shopping trip, they arrive at the hotel and crash after the night’s activities.
-1800 Jane shows up and says she wants to take them to Lagos Island so they can get some outfits for the next night’s auction (black tie affair) as well as treat them to some real food. The group is ecstatic and join her.
- Unfortunately for them, their okada drivers take a detour through a really nasty part of town and they discover a ghoul party about to commence, with them as the main course. Calas demonstrates how effective a shotgun can truly be, while the rest of the team barely hold off their hungry attackers. Eventually, Jane looks to OJ and tells him she’s had enough and casts some sort of massive spell which leaves the ghouls dead…all of them. She then passes out from the casting.
- 2000 They finally make it to Lagos Island, check into a hotel and do yet more shopping. They eat a hearty dinner and retire for the evening.

6 Jul 75/Saturday
- 1900 The team arrives at the auction, held in the Global Sandstorm building and watch as artifact after artifact is sold. Eventually, the Piri Ries map comes up, but Jane is quickly outbid. The final sale price, 2.1 million Nuyen. Jane tells OJ her employer wants the map and to get it. At this point, OJ brings up the very poor wording of the original agreement and demands a second payment equal to the first to retrieve it (17% of the value). Well, needless to say, Jane is vexed, but she finally comes to an agreement to increase the overall payment. She has also learned to word her future deals with runners exactly. Thanks OJ!
- 2115 The winner of the bid, Medjay. He collects the map and while he is doing so, the Apep Consortium and Azzie teams make their way to the garage. Assuming they will probably attempt to take the map, Syndell waits until Medjay enters an elevator, then has a sprite use gremlins on it….forcing it to move very slowly, then release the brakes the last four floors. The team takes the other elevator and discover the other two teams waiting in their vehicles for Medjay.
Syndell hacks the vehicles, locks the doors, and disables them with the occupants still in. Once the elevator crashes, they rush to secure the map, to find Medjay still alive, bruised, but alive. Fireballs start enveloping the team and Medjay, so Syndell blacks out the windows on both vehicles (so the occupants can’t see out) and the fireballs finally stop. They find Medjay has been knocked unconscious and they take the map case and make their escape. Jane meets them and they make a dash to the airport where they catch a flight out with Innocence and eventually make it back to Seattle. They receive their pay and each head off to their domiciles to spend some much needed time relaxing, training, and probably…more shopping.

Dang, we're racking up the miles...

- 4 Jul 2075 (Thursday)
- 1200/OJ and Kayless finish speaking with Hippo and they head to the Novo Porto to get the rest of the team. Unfortunately, cat on a stick doesn’t agree with Kayless and he ends up spending the rest of the day in his room. Ruthless is feeling much better though and is ready to get out of the hotel! Both Ruthless and OJ summon some spirits for the upcoming visit the the Dancing Ork (Silence’s usually hangout), but are so exhausted from the summoning, they rest for a couple more hours.
- 1400-1600/They head up to the Dancing Ork (in Agege) and not so subtly enter the brothel to find Silence. They are apparently so distracted with the run down, dirty, putrid joint, they don’t notice as Silence makes his way out of one of the back rooms and out the back door. It is only through pure chance (really, really pure chance…one could say an act of the Almighty), that Ruthless notices the rear exit door shutting. Ruthless decides to check it out and sees the person they seek trying to climb onto the roof of the next building. She goes into full action and attempts to capture this guy and realizes she is not the grappler of the party. She calls for help and Covon and OJ get out there to subdue him.
- 1600-1800/They head back to the Novo Porto via okada and wait for the thief to awaken. Once they do, they successfully interrogate him to discover he stole the artifact for Uzochi Oluleye. He already gave Uzochi the artifact so he has no idea where it’s at. They call Jane to pick up Silence and she does so at 2000.
- 2200/They head over the Three Friends because they remember they saw Uzochi there. When they arrive, they discover he hasn’t been there, but Hippo let’s them know he is throwing some sort of get together tonight around midnight at his compound in….Agege. The runners realize they have to rush to get back to Agege.
- Midnight…they arrive at the compound to discover chanting coming from the courtyard, while guards patrol the exterior. Ruthless goes astral and sees a half dozen guards inside as well as a couple of mages around an artifact in the courtyard. They decided to climb the wall and get on top of what appears to be a living complex. They do so wonderfully and start throwing flash bang grenades and ball lightnings throughout the courtyard. Covon discovers he is far better at hitting targets up to 12 meters away with his knives than at close range, and these AK-97s are not all that bad. After nearly a dozen seconds, they dispatch all the opposition and grab not only the statue, but Uzochi and toss all of them into the white Toyota pick up truck they found in the courtyard. Covon jumps behind the wheel and OJ tells him to head off to Ife while he takes his place behind the medium machine gun mounted in the bed of the truck.
- 5 Jul 75/0002 (Friday): It’s off to Ife…what will happen on their 168 km drive?

Dinner with the Oni and a happy Hippo

- Kayless finally arrives in Lagos and meets up with OJ and Covon. Priest and Ruthless have come down with a terrible stomach virus and can’t make it out of the Novo Porto hotel.
- Since Kayless wasn’t able to bring all this toys along, they decided to head up to the Dudu Dud Oja (arms market in Agege). There, Kayless is like a kid in a candy store and gets loaded up.
- Jane arranged for them to fly to Ife via Innocent. He gets them there safely, though they are shot at enroute. Once they arrive, they discover the palace is massive with loads of guards and red-robed priests who escort them around the entire time. Their room is beyond beautiful and they had down to the viewing in the basement levels of the palace.
- They split up to see if they can spot Samriel and the sextant; they spot the former with a group of elves, but not the latter. OJ sees this large map on display and an internal voice tells him this thing is of great power.
- After the viewing, the head up to the formal dinner with the king. Also at the table are the other individuals interested in various artifacts:- Geogiy Abelev: a Russian archeologist who keeps thugs around him at all times.
- Dr. Raoul Menendez: an Aztechnology exec whose guards do not hide they are Aztechnology security.- Medjay: a Nubian who has no entourage and fits in with every group
- Dr. Julianna Smyth: a collector from Hong Kong who has a couple of bodyguards and an assistant
— Katherine Silveroak: an elven lady accompanied by three clearly trained bodyguards and Samriel (who appears less a part of their group and more as a hanger-on).
- Kayless, who has never attended such an elaborate affair, does a fantastic job emulating the other guests and makes it appear as he attend formal banquets on a regular basis. During the course of the meal, Kayless notices Katherine’s snide remarks concerning the meal, the setting, and just about anything (in Sperethiel). Sickened with her comments, Kayless turns to the head of the table (at which the Oni is sitting) and in his best Sperethiel, tells the Oni how wonderful this entire affair is. Much to his confusion, the Oni asks an advisor to translate, but the advisor simply shrugs her shoulders and whispers that she believes he was very appreciative based on his body language, though his words were unintelligible. In fact, none of those who spoke Sperethiel had any clue as to what he said.
- They finish dinner around midnight and are escorted back to their rooms. About 0100 Thursday morning, the palace guard burst into everyone’s rooms and begin searching for a missing artifact, a small statue to be exact. Not finding it, they switch out the guards and dispatch units to find it. Jane is able to discover that the statue was prized by the Oni and it appears an Igbo agent stole it. OJ and Kayless attempt to question several people, but the guards do not talk. However, one of the servants says it was probably an Igbo thief who took it to dishonor the Oni. OJ is able to surreptitiously pass on information to the guards that the elven contingent probably has the statue and they receive further attention from the guards.
- Jane asks the runners to retrieve the thief and the artifact and bring both back to the palace (with the thief alive) so she can gain the Oni’s favor and get an invite to the auction itself.
- 4 Jul/0700: The team flies back to Lagos with Innocent and OJ calls Hippo so they can meet and see if he can get some information about the possible suspect. Hippo agrees to meet them at 1000 at the Three Friends.
-1000: After sampling some of the local cuisine (cat on a stick), OJ is able to discover that an Igbo thief by the name of Silence is probably the culprit. OJ thanks Hippo with a 10,000 Naira fee and agrees not to reveal where the source of this information, which makes him a very happy Hippo indeed.

Shopping in Lagos

2 Jul 2075 (Tuesday)
- Realizing they really need their face, Ruthless contacts Obnoxious Jones and tells him about the run their on. He comes to Lagos and meets them at the market. They discover how far their Naira actually go and purchase quite a few items they need (and some they may need in the future).
- The begin their search for Samriel and find no one matching his description has checked into any of the local hotels. OJ gets and idea to check out the evening activities where influential members of Lagos society may go. He finds a place called The Three Friends where local fixers apparently conduct business. There he finds two men, Hippo Kojoli (a very large and well connected fixer) and Uzochi Oluleye (an older human male, who is an elder amongst the Igbo). OJ decides Hippo is the better person to befriend. OJ easily makes acquaintances with the man and Hippo directs him to an antiquities dealer at the Leventis store named Kayin.
- Off they go back to the market and meet Kayin. He tells them he knows of this Samriel and that the elf is probably in town to go to the black market antiquities auction the Yoruba king is putting on this weekend. In fact, the king (Oni Adegoke) is holding a viewing of the items up for auction and Kayin might be able to get them in…if they perform a small service for him.
- Kayin asks them to just head into Surulere to retrieve and iron mask he would like to have. The team checks into this Surulere and discover 100% of the populace were wiped out during the VITAS outbreak and is thought to be haunted. The team makes it to the edge of Surulere and discover a rather high border has been erected made of garbage. They sneak into the district and almost make it to the house undetected. A young girl is sitting on the steps of the next door house crying and tells OJ she needs help finding her brother who is in the house. She fears for his life. OJ wants to just move on, but disembodied voices goad her (Priest). When it looks like the team is going to continue on past, dark figures come rushing out of the house and attack the concealed runners.
- The team is evenly matched and after the girl’s friends start getting hurt/knocked unconscious, she calls for a truce. She and OJ come to an agreement that she will allow them to get the mask if he delivers cadavers to the border on a specified date at a specified time. He agrees and they retrieve the mask and take it back to Kayin.
- True to his word, Kayin has arranged for them to take part in the viewing. OJ mentions to Kayin that he needs several Area Boys to pick up some items from the Surulere border on the specified date and time.
- The team returns to the hotel to get some rest before heading to the airport to catch a flight to the palace at Ife (about 186 km from Lagos).
- Realizing they really want their decker, rigger, and physical adept along, they place calls to each to see if they’re available.
- In reviewing the details of the arrangement with OJ, Ruthless realizes she forgot to mention that Jane will split the finder’s fee for the item (a sextant), which comes to about ¥50,000 for the party to split as they will.

Taking a trip

- Ruthless and her new companion, Priest, receive calls to meet a Ms. Johnson that evening at the 77 Club in Renton. They agree to go and meet Ms. Johnson. She needs a team to accompany her to Lagos in order to track down an elf by the name of Samriel Lockwood. It seems her employer (a private antiquities dealer) recently lost an item from his collection and the only clue points to this elf. Ms. Johnson tell them she is going, so they’ll act more as protection and assistance.
- With some great negotiating (read: none), they agree to ¥2000 per person per day, plus a per diem of ¥250 per person per day with a minimum of 5 days (per diem) paid up front. She also covers lodging and travel to and from Nigeria. Ms. Johnson tells them to call her Jane.
- Priest recommends they purchase several items for the trip, so they go off shopping for items they believe they need. Unfortunately, both of them realize they can’t use Linguasofts and neither of them speak the local languages. They just hope they can find someone local willing to act as translator.
- The next morning (30 Jun 2075), they meet at the airport and take off to Lagos. Each team member may only take a duffel bag and backpack onto the plane as there is very, very limited space. After what seems like a long, long flight (actually a couple), they land in Lagos and make their way to the hotel Porto Novo. Before they leave the airport, Ms. Johnson exchanges their per diem into the local currency and they each receive 25,000 Naira.
- The Porto Novo proves to be quite a disappointment, with most of the money apparently going into security than into the hotel. Bugs are not an issue as each room is equipped with its own lizard. They tip the hall guard nicely, who guarantees no one will steal their stuff and he directs them to George, one of the young boys who wait outside to act as guides, translators, etc.
- Jane mentions she needs to head to the local market to pick up ammo, as she didn’t bring much with her. They take off in a couple of okada (a modified motorcycle taxi) to head off to the Levants Store (an indoor shopping center/outdoor market).
- On the way, they see several men with AK-97s pulling young men and women out of a bus and forcing them to the ground. Some of the young people are forced into the back of a pick up truck. This infuriates Jane who gets out with her gun. Priest, Ruthless, and Covon follow suit. After a short battle, they drive away the last surviving gunmen and continue to the market.
- Welcome to Lagos!

Chips, but no salsa

Pengrave, desparate to stay alive, promises the team anything they desire. The team decides they want him to arrange a meet with Cooperman before the big gang meeting. They tell him to arrange the meeting for 1300 the next day underneath one of the underpasses used for the underground rigger games. Pengrave gladly coordinates the meet. They ask him further questions, but Engrave only knows Cooperman and is able to provide limited information.
The team arrives at the meeting site and sets up an ambush. Cooperman rides into the site with eight of his horde and bravely approaches the runners. They banter back and forth before they trigger their ambush. Covon tosses a flash bang grenade with variable effect to each gang leader and Cosgrey charges Cooperman, taking him down in one fell swing. As each gang leader is finally able to act, four of them turn tail and run away. Four attempt to put up a fight, but two are eliminated and the final two surrender their arms. The team finds Cooperman’s chip and remove it…noting it killed him when he went unconscious.
The team must finally figure out how to find Griffin, the street samurai who has the final chip. They review their notes and notice several joy boys and girls have been found sliced and diced on the streets of Seattle. Kayless reaches out to Det. Margese and after a massive donation, the detective points out all the killings have taken place in a 15 block area. The team decides to check out the area and find out more information related to the killings. They come up with a plan to subdue Griffin, through using magic to disguise OJ as a lady of the night.
After some time, Griffin makes his appearance and the team springs their trap. Covon opens up in an attempt to take Griffin down, but is knocked unconscious in a single swing. Cosgrey charges him in a rage and injures Griffin significantly, but not able to take him out. Kayless places a well aimed shot, killing Griffin instantly. They grab the chip and call Roxanne to make arrangements to hand off the chips and get paid. Roxanne sets the hand off for 0900 at the Banshee.

- 30 May 2075/0900 – The team meets in the backroom of the Banshee with Roxanne, who examines the chip and pays them the agreed upon sum. While there, they hear gunshots coming from the front of the bar and OJ has them open the door. When he sees Junior Martelli is in the other room with 5 associates, he casts Influence upon him, causing him to leave the bar. Roxanne immediately calls KE and the team escapes as quickly as possible…though Kayless wanted to run them down with their vehicle.

Naked beauty, the dwarf, and the beast

Rorschach calls the runners and tells them Ms. Johnson has a job offer for them at the Banshee at 0100. The team arrives around 0030 and hands over their heavier weapons to the dwarf manning the weapon’s check. They immediately spot Ms. Johnson, who leads them to a back room, where they meet Urlan Manes, President of Global Technologies.

He hires them to recover three data chips stolen from his company. He is not concerned about the thieves and only know one of his own, Tee Hee, was involved. A security team dispatched earlier to Tee Hee’s apartment discovered he had been evicted two weeks prior. Ms. Johnson, introduced as Roxanne Wunter, brings out a cube of Tee Hee’s stuff brought from his cubicle.

The team believes they can use the items to magically track Tee Hee and go to the Hippy Camp to seek assistance from the elders (assuming there is a mage or shaman at the camp). The elders direct Kayless to “Crazy Bob” who proves that possession is nine-tenths the law as he points out Kayless is the owner of said property. He warns Kayless of the nanite threat and asks OJ to assist him in tracking Tee Hee. They spend several hours in Crazy Bob’s magical lodge, while Kayless and Cosgrey examine the other items. They discover a toolkit with an inscription reading “Future Good Luck, Flair”, and a Holocube with pics of Tee Hee and an older gentleman named Dr. Hendrix “Flair”. They also find some herbal tea with “Orion Organic Grocery” on it as well as a lighter that says “Breadboard Quaff and Stuff.”

Once OJ is done holding hands with Crazy Bob, he reveals Tee Hee is on the third floor of an apartment building somehwere near Cascade Rd. Cosgrey and Kayless discovered the two stores are located on Cascade Rd as well. The team decides to head down there to see if they can find Tee Hee. Prior to departure, OJ orders some Urbanbrawl tickets from Johnny Bluestone set three weeks from today.

Upon arriving, Kayless dispatches four drones with instructions to begin searching for Tee Hee. After an hour, they discover Flair coming out of an apartment building whom OJ decided to tag with a stealth tag (successfully). Kayless sneaks the drone into the building and finds an unconscious Tee Hee in a third floor room.

Ensuring Flair isn’t on his way back, Cosgrey uses his substantial combat abilities to subdue Tee Hee whom they spirit out to their brand spankin new Ares Roadmaster.

The team decides to capture Flair as well and almost easily overcome Flair…but they do. They then take the pair to Camp Hippy for questioning.

Once Tee Hee awakes, with some First Aid, he spills everything he knows. Thomas Martelli (also a Global Technologies employee and Urlan hater) is behind the theft and is working with Booker Pengrave from HSE. There is a fixer named Cooperman, a samurai named Griffin, and a rigger named Val. Tee Hee reveals the data chip info is on Juniors computer, but doesn’t know where they are. He knows there was a mage name Freya on the team, but she was left behind.

On 27 May 75 at 1200, they go to Dr. Bob’s, where Freya is supposedly located. After some excessive bribery, they are brought directly to Freya who gives them even more info about the run against Global Technology as the team members. She offers to assist the team when they go against Cooperman, because she wants some sweet revenge.

They return to Camp Hippy and set Flair and Tee Hee to some Matrix Legwork in exchange for their lives….they comply easily.

28 May 75/0100: Tee Hee and Flair emerge from the Matrix with a lot of information. Pengrave has a major party tonight at his condo, Cooperman is holding a huge “war council” on Wednesday evening, and they gather more intel about a lot of different topics/subjects. They discover there are still tickets left to the party, so OJ gets Johnny Bluestone to get him some. He calls Freya and invites her to the party as his date.

At 1100, the team drops Flair and Tee Hee off at Jeannette Twenten’s Soy Cafe so that Roxanne can pick them up. Wisely, Kayless leaves a drone to observe the pick up, only to see two orcs enter the cafe and murder both men. He follows them out with the drone to see them enter a Westwind…with Junior behind the wheel. He maneuvers the drone onto the vehicle, which leads them back to Global Technologies parking garage.

Around 1700, Kayless sets himself up on a nearby rooftop after securing a safe house in the area. OJ, Freya, and Cosgrey go to the party and mingle. They discover the rigger calls herself Clea and has Pengrave bewitched. They meet several contacts at the party and watch the couple. Pengrave and Cleo depart, only to have the team follow them to the dock. The team sees them get into an Aztech Nightrunner and decide it’s time to take them as well.

They drop a flash bang on the boat and Cosgrey charges in to incapacitate anyone left standing, only to miss. OJ sends a beast spirit in, which still doesn’t knock them out. A well placed shot from Kayless’ drone takes down Pengrave and Cosgrey finally gets Cleo/Val.

The team takes them away and pull the chip from Cleo/Val…whom they bring back to consciousness only to discover she has no memory since inserting the chip. She is able to confirm Cooperman’s warehouse and more details from that night. The team decides to release her and get ready to speak with Pengrave.

Engrave quickly agrees to give them whatever they want…we we’ll see what happens next.

Back-stabbing, confusion, and racists

-12 May 2075/0630
The team arrives at the safe house arranged through Rohrschach. OJ calls Kiyoko to see if MCT might be interested in the items and researcher they recovered. She lets him know she will speak with her superiors to see if they are interested. Kiyoko calls back and offers them 5500 Nuyen for the entire package, which is far too low for OJ and the team.
At 0700 Rohrschach calls the team and lets them know that their Johnson is currently in the safe keeping of a group of orks from the Ork Underground. She is able to arrange a meet between them and the leader of the group, Allan Bronston. They are to enter the Underground via the Lordstrung entrance.
The party meets with Mr. Bronston, an extremely old ork that seems extremely confused. He is under the impression that the team will rescue several ork women and children that disappeared near the research facility they infiltrated. In exchange, he offers to put them in contact with their Mr. Johnson, but only after they complete the rescue. The team is likewise confused and vehemently inform Bronston that they must complete this mission before they will even think about this second mission. In consternation, they leave and try to get ahold of Rohrschach, but she does not respond to OJs calls or texts.
In the mean time, the team starts coming up with alternative plans and Syndell orders a survival bubble. After a few hours (at 1500) Syndell finally gets ahold of Rohrschach who lets her know that Bronston must have been extremely confused as to what was promised. She agrees to contact him and arrange a meet for them with their Johnson. She is able to provide his address in the Barrens and they proceed there.
Around 2130, they arrive at the safe house and see Mr. Johnson’s assistant in the window. With their typical caution, they scan the area as well as astrally recon it to find there are a large number of people in there. They are permitted entry, only to find that Mr. Johnson is not there. They are “greeted” by a human who is an obvious racist and assumes their human leader will make his way in. Not wanting to risk the capture of their cargo, they instruct Kayless to leave (who does so only after some cajoling). After some rather hostile “negotiations” OJ drops a flash bang at his own feet and combat ensues. OJ passes out from damage, Syndell flees, and Covon takes down the speaker, scoops up OJ and runs out. One of the humans is brave enough to yell obscenities at their fleeing forms, but does not depart the building.
The team finds another safe house and Syndell calls Shadow to see if they can get further information about what the devil is going on. Come to find out, there’s not a mysterious conspiracy involving Rohrschach (as suspected), but Mr. Johnson’s assistant (Wendell Holmes) is actually a traitor with the Hands of Five. The Hands of Five want the samples to create a weapon against metahumans and Mr. Johnson has not been receiving their meeting requests. Bronston had no clue that Holmes was a traitor and was dealing in good faith. Rohrschach is able to contact Biogene (Johnson’s company) and arrange a meet with a different Johnson. Biogene wants the samples to create products to help metahumans. Aztechnology is after the samples so they won’t fall into anyone else’s hands. They meet with the new Mr. Johnson (13 May/1200), hand over the samples, and hand over the researcher for a nice sum.
OJ starts ordering an Ares Roadmaster, some SWAT armor (for the team), and begins learning Arcana. The team takes this downtime to prepare to return to speak with Bronston about rescuing the orks from the research facility.